 
The Indie Collaboration Presents:

Tales from Darker Places

A Chilling Horror Anthology

Smashwords Edition

Donny Swords

Chris Raven

A.L. Butcher

Alan Hardy

Adam Bigden

Dani J. Caile

Copyright 2014

Welcome to Darker Places,

A selection of chilling stories from some of the best Indie authors on the market. We dare you to venture into these pages of spine chilling tales and stories of dark shadows & darker tidings, shifters, ancient warriors, zombies, & demons... See the world through the Ripper's eyes, and so much more. So many dark, foul things wait for you between these pages. Freely donated by the authors themselves, these dark passages are a great example of their various, unique styles and imaginations.

Join us in Darker Places.

Brought to you by

The Indie Collaboration.

The Indie Collaboration grew out of a group of likeminded independent authors. Together, we decided to show the world how great works of fiction can be created without the involvement of large publishing companies; creating a direct channel between ourselves and our readers is of the utmost importance to us. Each author has freely donated their time and work and are committed to the Indie Collaboration's cause. Offering the best of indie authors in bite size pieces for free or at a reasonable cost. We hope you enjoy our books

Contents

DONNY SWORDS

Dark Places

The Cleansing Bar

Sandra

A Chance Meeting?

CHRIS RAVEN

The Worm's Head Manuscript

The Sham

A.L. BUTCHER

Jack Is My Name

A Blade in the Night

So Many Nights, So Many Sins

Moonlight

ALAN HARDY

Double

ADAM BIGDEN

Where?

DANI J CAILE

A Day in the Life of a Zombie

Payback

The Indie Collaboration & Darker Places Present:

DONNY SWORDS

Donny Swords is an author of fantasy, sword & sorcery, and most of all, heroism & horror. Rather than constrict his inspirations within a specific category, Mr. Swords writes from the gut. Where it hurts, and words have the power to move you. A dash of love, a dash of doomsday...

Among his novels, two are set within The Bitter Ends franchise, Sandra, arrives in Darker Places via the newest, soon to be hot off the shelf Bitter Ends novel, Other Side of Town.

This is the fourth volume for Donny Swords with The Indie Collaboration. He has contributed stories to Snips, Snails, & Puppy Dog Tales, Summer Shorts, Spectacular Tales, & of course Tales From Darker Places.

Follow @  mishanoamy.blogspot.com

Dark Places

Dark places, where even in the brightest day things unimaginable hide. Those hallowed hells, pits of ruin found not only in nature, but also in men. Within the recesses of the mind, we find them. In hearts, they linger. They fester in thoughts, and grow with deeds. Ebon and foul, unholy and scorned, they prosper through despair, with desperate longings, through unrequited love.

No one truly fathoms where sorrow takes the mind, where anger drives it, or where hopelessness leads it. We are all unique, similar but wholly different, wonderment, and despicable.

All we need is a catalyst to set us forth. Oh the shadows we could see, the dark places we would know, not only in our hearts, but also in the world, above and below. What drives one man to the brink of insanity is another's breezy day.

Not all of us think the same; take Kenneth, a normal man and once a good one. His spool had wound rather tightly before he rented his flat on 736 Laughlin Lane, before she came to him. Sometimes it only takes one tug, and all comes unraveled.

"Well then, just sign there and it's all yours."

Kenneth took the pen, still slick with sweat from the pudgy manager's hand. He found Mr. Baldric's nervousness peculiar, and a bit unnerving. Baldric did not smell pleasant either, sour cologne and perspiration hung heavily in the air.

Kenneth began to read the contract, taking his time to appease his expectations. He did not notice the beads of sweat collecting at a rapid pace on Baldric's brooding brow. Nor did he see the tremors the man underwent as he read, and satisfied everything was in order, signed the contract. However, Baldric's expelled sigh of relief did strike him as odd.

"Are you feeling well?"

"Oh yes Mister Moreland, quite. It is just a bit stuffy in here, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes. Yes it is. So the place is mine then?"

"Why of course it is, you've signed the contract." Evan Baldric's eyes sparked mischievously, "Do you require anything else?"

"No, that is all. I bid you good day Mr. Baldric."

"Very well, good day Mr. Moreland, don't mind the noises on windy nights. The boards do creak infrequently. If you have any questions, or are in need of repairs, please don't hesitate to ask."

"Thank you, I will."

Baldric nodded and put on his fedora, departing to the landing. Kenneth did not let the man out. He knew the way after all. The front door made a hideous creak. I am going to have to oil that... he thought. He went to the dining hall and after a bit of a hassle with the swelling boards, managed to raise the windowpane. The smell of fresh lilacs was a welcomed counteraction to Baldric's aromatic repugnance. Good riddance.

Kenneth made the call to the movers, who surprised him by showing themselves promptly on his stoop at a quarter past nine. Led by an interesting druggie from Belfast named Quinn, the workers were actually quite orderly, moving in a pattern throughout the house, setting out the furniture just so. At eleven, the unpackers arrived. They methodically went room to room putting away his personal effects just as they were in his old home, socks found the top drawer of his dresser, undergarments the second, silver went in the drawer nearest the stovetop, platters in the right cupboard, above the silver drawer. The moving crew gave each room meticulous, methodical, attention, and at first, Kenneth found it fascinating, soon after, he became listless, choosing to sit in his study and edit the play he had composed for Evelyn.

Ah Evelyn, such sweetness, so sensual, seductive, and sassy. Twelve years her senior, Kenneth found her too alluring to pass over, even if his scruples suffered somewhat because of winning her. Her charms he could not and would not resist.

The play was her idea, a few days after Aryana's death. A true travesty that, though it left less strings... albeit small sorrows. It was quite by accident, after all his wife had just had her brakes checked. Although he missed her, tensions were on the rise. Aryana permitted him mistresses in the past, though sex was his motivator then. Evelyn was different from the start. Her mind endeared his heart to Evelyn, her flaxen hair, whiles, and taut body, only lent her extra appeal.

Kenneth worked laboriously, changing this word to that and vice versa, picturing his lover's lips as she spoke them. It had to be perfect. She was his discovery, his star. Finally, his writing had a voice, an exquisite one. Audiences the world over would become enraptured by his monologues, delivered to them by a beauty unmatched.

By four that evening, his move in was complete. Pictures hung on walls as if they always had, and each nook and cranny looked lived in, albeit tidy. Everything was in proper order. The old adage rang true: you do get what you pay for.

A chubby woman, older than her years suggested, crude, but kind, led the unpackers. She asked him if he would like anything for supper and he obliged, stating what he wanted.

"Spaghetti and garlic bread- a tossed salad would do nicely as well. I trust I can supply my wine?"

"Yes sir."

"Very well, take the extra bills and buy dinner for your crew. They did a splendid job."

She thanked him, though not emphatically. Her eyes said something other, suggesting he was too frugal. Kenneth responded kindly, unaccustomed to portraying a snob...

"Please consider the cuisine as a separate transaction."

"I shall settle up for your labors upon your return.

"Thank you."

"Not at all, when can I expect you?"

"I will be back in scarcely an hour."

She left then, with the rest of the movers and unpackers. The house fell silent. Standing had informed him of his burgeoning bladder, and so he retired to the washroom to relieve himself. He felt spry after, and curious to inspect his surroundings a tad closer. What he discovered was a marvel, everything was immaculate. They had arranged his books just as he liked them, by author, and his LPs in alphabetical order. All his effects were as neat as a bug in rug, perfection.

Everything gleamed. It left quite an impression. Satisfied, he went to the bar and poured out a scotch. He savored it, not wasting its flavor by tossing it back in one gulp. Kenneth abhorred gluttons.

He studied the garden, outside his den's window, which was in a state of disarray...

I will call out some gardeners in the morning.

The woman arrived with a box, steaming in the briskness of the cooling evening. He proffered her with a hefty stack of bills and sat in the dining nook, eating slowly, dreaming of Evelyn. The pasta tasted delicious, and the garlic bread heavy on garlic and buttered lightly, just the way he liked it.

In fact, the entire day had gone without a bump.

Pushing away his supper, he finished the last slice of bread. He had eaten more than normal, having felt ravenous. Now came the time to polish off the wine, and turn in.

The thought warmed him.

That night was unlike any other. The wind raced through the eves, and under the foundations. It seemed to rattle the walls. His dreams came disjointedly, full of violent and disturbing images. Even though he dreamed of obsidian deeds, what he did not see, the suggestions his subconscious mind made, disturbed him more.

Insidiously the nightmares began painting his new love, Evelyn, in a harsher light. All the while, his deceased wife grew in sainthood. The dreams recollected her in crystalline clarity, and pointed him to the sacrifices she had made- because she loved him.

Whispers in the dark began telling him what he had not known. It was a ploy- all of it, to gain his wealth... to make him Evelyn's puppet, this is what the voice told him. It said he was a fool. It tried to make him a bargain. He shunned it. His mind grew silent, though nakedly horrific images still danced in his mind.

He awoke with a start, hearing a loud bump and scraping near the outer wall. A branch, it had to be a branch. The wind is having fits. He flipped his covers back, swung his legs to the side of the bed, put on his slippers, and went out to investigate. He had not bothered to turn on the light, as it would likely give him a headache if he did, so instead he relied on the residual illumination streaming through the windows from the streetlamps and moon.

Scrape! Thud! The sound of trotting feet, light and bare over the floorboards...

"Who's there?"

Nothing.

Kenneth tried the light switch nearest him... nothing.

He went out to the hallway to search the drawer of the small table near the front door, where he kept his keys and a flashlight. The packing company has quality employees it will be there, he thought. His heart responded with a pair of bump, bumps.

A shadow ran over the wall. Kenneth let out a small cry, nearly forgetting his plan to get the flashlight altogether. Then he broke for the table, pulling the drawer with enough urgency to cause the flashlight to roll crazily. He snatched it up. The shadow sprinted across his face. Clicking the light on, Kenneth scanned the room.

Nothing.

He cursed.

The wind reached a crescendo, howling like a pack of wolves as it licked at the eves, awnings, and floor from below the foundation. The light beam caught on two amber eyes, and then they vanished. He heard trotting feet again, and then, these too disappeared.

"Whoever you are, you're unwelcome!"

Giggles rolled down the stairwell.

"I am telling you to leave at once, or I will call the authorities!"

Silence.

He went towards the stairs, fighting to control his nerves. He twitched, and jumped nevertheless. The flashlight clattered to the ground, the batteries spilled out, the landing went dark. Something wiry had tackled him, his face mashed into the flooring. Whatever it was, it was strong. It lifted Kenneth's head, smacking his nose quite hard. He heard it crunch, felt the sting, his eyes grew blurry. He tried to fight. His attacker had other plans. It drove a knee into his lower back, pushing him back down to the floor. Long, greyish fingers, covered his mouth, and in the pale moonlight from the panes, he saw his blood glistening as it ran over the attacker's hand... another hand gripped his windpipe.

"You know what I want. Three days Kenneth Moreland... all you get. Otherwise, I shall come for you! Now sleep, dream, I will return."

Kenneth awoke to misery. Yes, the birds sang and sunlight bolted through the shades and windows... His scene appeared rather light to the naked eye. The dark, already sensing his weakness, his desire to surrender succumbing to salvation or sacrifice, had taken root in his arteries, in all regions of his brain... his cells.

His soul sensed the separation. Flesh ideally served only as housing for the energy defining him... He peeled his face from the pool of dry blood it rested in slowly, glancing at the clock... 12:07 PM. By his estimation, he had slept for at least ten hours, as the demon spoke within his dreams. He had already missed his appointment with his trainer, and was late to the theater.

Kenneth was a mess.

He required a shower, and then a doctor. He could not make himself leave. Besides, Evelyn would be by at three. He needed to see her, wanted answers. If what Racknell said was true... well, he needed explanations.

Was the little demon right?

How could he have been so gullible?

When he had made his way to the washroom, he had a look at his nose. It was broken, but not too bad. Sure, it swelled, and smarted, no worse than the bops he had gotten playing soccer as a kid. He would be fine, at least his body would. All bets were off concerning his soul.

Anticipating her arrival made him ill at ease. His was a rock and a hard place. Gravity seemed harder to fight, flesh felt tenuous at best housing his soul. This is where distinction had led him, his vanity, and for all his handsomeness, flesh was only a vessel, the same as a jar or vase, just as fragile, as easily shattered.

She did not phone. He began to pace between shots of scotch, fretting over his decision. No doubt, Racknell was watching- no doubt. He peered through cracks, or through the stairway, from some shadow some place, a darker location possibly, a closet, from under the bed, Racknell saw him, he knew. Oh, yes- the bugger knew. The demon spawn understood inner trappings, private thoughts; the language one's body speaks as his was then.

At 3:05 PM, Evelyn pulled her sleek sports car into the drive. Kenneth heard the pop music she always insisted on listening to when they coupled before she came into view. Her heels clopped down the sidewalk. The bell rang. He fetched the handle, trying to smile, despite the unpleasantly of his nose.

"Darling, you are ravishing."

"Oh lord Ken, what is with your nose?"

"No worries, just a rather nasty bump."

"Well it doesn't look good, you should have it checked."

"Perhaps."

"How is your new place? Did you rest well?"

Her eyes seemed like a pinprick for only a second.

"Yes and no. Could we discuss something?"

"Why of course. Here? Or would you rather pour us a drink?"

"Follow me."

Kenneth led her to the sitting room, to the bar there.

"Pick your poison," he said half-jokingly.

"I'll have rum, over ice, with ginger ale."

He poured out a scotch, neat, three fingers high, and made Evelyn's drink. He had rehearsed and re-written his speech all day. It felt high time to unburden himself. Strolling back to his seductive visitor, he handed her drink over.

She took a fair sip, moistening her plump lips after.

"So have you met Racknell?"

He spat out his whiskey, dropping his glass, which shattered on the floor. The shadows played tricks with his eyes then, the darkness wanting to betray him, to take him with it to some darker place, where angels die.

"Racknell! Come on out, it's time to bargain."

Wide-eyed and panic-struck, Kenneth said nothing. His windpipe had abandoned him. The world swam, and he felt again how loosely his flesh clung to his soul, and just how simply he could cast his body off, becoming a ghost.

Thump, smack! Footpads on floorboards, staunch trepidations, searing needling dread, his ripened ambitions trumped, had he been a poser? Racknell maintained he had. He heard the demon, made more real in the light of day, whistling as he approached- a Yankee song, "Dixie."

Absurd, he thought, Oh how cruel life is! I am a buffoon.

"Kenneth."

The voice was not Evelyn's, not as magical as that.

For heaven's sake, I cannot look at him... I shall not, Lord please.

Nothing heard him. Kenneth had no choice but to obey. He had choices to face up to, unpleasant choices, dark or darker decisions, and indecisions. Turning his head to the voice, determined he might see the demon who haunted him the prior night he expected to see Racknell. The demon who haunted him the evening past, with a straggly u-shape bowl of hair, stringy and oily, framing a haunt of a face, with sharp coal eyes, capped off by an angular jaw, and a jutting chin, lined with rows of pointy, jagged teeth, sporting spiky, hairy ears, sitting on a thin neck, adorning a frightful skull. Kenneth imagined the menacing head arriving in his field of view riding atop a torso with hard packed sinewy muscles drawn taut over squat and strangely longish, impish bones, with slender lengthy fingers coming along for the ride on angry, assaultive hands, replete with thick, sharp nails, and attached to capable arms...

This, he did not see.

Baldric had come, using Racknell's voice, his hair and the demon's the same as Kenneth had just imagined, his skin the same dead gray... long fingers...

"Listen to her, and do not run. You die if you run."

Like a moth to a flame, he had taken to her, the Jezebel, the temptress, of desirous flesh, and fancy. She tricked him!

"Racknell gets over enthused in the wee hours. I will give you your explanations, and then, seeing how mighty I am, how I own you, I believe you will become my champion. It was your command of words that first caught my attention. It is a talent. This I cannot deny. I would let you serve me, as Racknell has for the past two thousand years, if you agree to pluck the souls I deem. You will become a mark, a blight to some, and my creature. I will spare you your soul if you do. You see, Racknell has served his term, so I must allow him his leave. I need someone new to take his place in the darkness of dreams."

"Will you serve me?"

"My wife- you killed her!"

"Why of course I did. I am Jezebel, a queen. She stood between my desires and me. Now, what is your desire? Do you choose endless damnation or to serve me? My flesh is still yours, if you still long for my embrace. Give me your answer now, you have run out of time- choose."

Kenneth's first thought was about her last offer, of her flesh, and he wondered if Racknell had gotten the same deal? Had he shared his devious lover with the demon? Certainly. The choice was an easy one, despite the foulness it promised.

"I shall follow."

"Good boy."

"Racknell, please lead him to the altar."

When he looked over, it was no longer Baldric, but the beast with whom he kept company. Racknell reached out, taking Kenneth's hand in his, and together they walked away.

Men like to hold onto false idealisms, choosing to see only what lies on the surface. They live only for satisfaction, for power, for money, for women, or for beauty. There is an old saying that goes: Beauty is only skin-deep. Kenneth Moreland learned this firsthand. Trouble wears a disguise, and now he did, his soul swapping bodies for Racknell's own vessel, his old flesh, home for the troubled demon who would pose as him thereafter.

Kenneth went on with Jezebel, to darker places than he had ever known, haunting for the sake of it, and learning to relish his duties. Regardless of her ugly side, she was splendor.

Freedom was overrated.

Dark Places ©2014 Donny Swords

The Cleansing Bar

Freddy was just a little boy when it happened.

It was a dark night, on a cold winter evening. Though he was only five, he could still recall it in his dreams, not the type of dreams that healthy boys have. Quite to the contrary, the unwanted dreams were nightmares. Waking from the dead of sleep was an ongoing turmoil, the kind that hurt his mind in ways untold. Before that night, when all came unraveled, the same evening his parents died, he could recollect with dimness at best. His memories felt hazed and skewed by his adoptive mother, Terra. He could not say why, it was something within, a warning, or a calling, and it told him not to trust her. Somehow, Terra was controlling his dreams, his wakefulness.

It was not easy to live the way he did, in constant turmoil between fantasy and reality. In time, he began to doubt his suspicions about his dreams. Fitful as they were, they felt darker than his reality. Terra was his mom now. Trusting her was not possible; though he could persevere. Some days like this one, she seemed a more viable option than the uncertainty he would face if he left home, the only place he had known for so long. Throughout all of it, the thirteen years he had spent under Terra's roof, she still seemed a stranger, and stranger she grew.

Time had not been easy on her.

Theirs had been a life of simplicity. Nevertheless, it was an uneasy one. As he grew, Freddy began to suspect things of her, rotten things. It all started with the most innocent of acts, when he was eight, tall enough at last to operate the kitchen sink by himself. They had gone out berry picking, and the juice had stained his hands. He had gone to the sink to wash up. Not knowing, he reached for the odd grey lump of soap on the sill. Terra had a fit, one full of scorn.

"Never- don't you ever touch that," she screamed.

Confused, he dropped the cleansing bar into the sink. Terra had gone off in a tirade, until to her relief the bar came away undamaged. It was too confusing to bear, too easy to misread what was happening.

That night, the same as many before, he went to sleep recounting the horrid events that claimed his parents' lives and the beast that slew them. He could still hear its grunts, like sounds from an ape. This was not how it appeared. He could never forget. The memory etched its way into his cortex like the lines of a marble statue, and it refused to go. Not that he had ever seen a statue. In fact, he had never seen anything but Terra's world.

Since that night, he lived in an alternate world, away from all the terrible folks.

As he toiled day in and day out, he began to wonder about the things he dreamt. For each of his suspicions, none checked themselves. They all seemed warranted. So now, he began to wonder more with each coming day.

He wondered who or what Terra really was.

There was no way of knowing. Truthfully, he felt crazy. Whatever he thought- it could not be true- or could it? His dilemma grew in strength, until he was no longer himself. It seemed as if he was outside himself looking in.

He was almost a man now, and more confused than ever.

He sat there, at the breakfast nook, staring at the cleansing bar, unaltered throughout his entire stay. It had become more than a lump of soap. It was Terra's not so secret, secret. Why was that thing so important to her? He was at a loss to explain it- the lump, (never used for cleansing to his knowledge) was actually hideous, so it was not its beauty... but what was it?

He had to know.

Every night he slept like the dead. There was no way to watch Terra, or to find out why she obsessed over that misshapen bar. Sleep was a drug. For his nightmares, willpower was of no use. What would it be like to see the moon? Such daydreams drove him, as did the shape and scent of the trees, the appeal of nature, its beauty, and wilderness...

Freddy thought that he would never know anything other than how he lived then. For every night before sundown, his eyes glued themselves shut, eager to replay the horrors once again. They would not surrender, if even for one evening. The dreams were changing, and he felt as if they were altering him.

"What are you dwelling on son?" Terra looked tired, wicked really. Her jetting tufts of knotted hair made her look bestial, and from the rings under her eyes, Freddy knew she had not slept again. She rarely rested well. Truthfully, he could not recall ever seeing her asleep at all.

"Nothing really."

Somehow his response passed by Terra's scrutiny. He wondered why, she was always attentive. Nothing got by her.

"Well instead of doing nothing, go get us a hen. Pluck it better this time."

"Yes ma'am." Another chicken, oh joy. He looked again at Terra, she looked worse than he originally had thought, her eyes shot red with a yellow tinge. Her skin seemed pasty, but thicker, rougher somehow...

Terra turned, seeming exhausted, and then moved slowly away. She almost dragged her left foot. Freddy trembled, and somehow, his eyes again found the lumpen bar. Then he discovered something he had not noticed before. A tiny knobby portion, no longer than a centimeter was missing. As if his brain was waking, curiosity took him over. His inquisitive mind drew him towards it like a magnet. There he stood shaking; he did not want to believe what he saw, a single hair, which matched neither Terra nor himself.

Transfixed, he stood staring. His eyelids twitched excitedly, even as his throat and stomach plummeted spiritually. Sinking sensations took him to the depths of dread. His eyes burned, his cheeks went cold. The stiffness of his frame went unchecked. He did not notice the swelling pain. Tensions were there nonetheless. He felt these. A racing brain, awakening now, was trying to tell him something. He could not hear it. Despite the lack of blood flow to his skin, or its coolness to the touch, he began to perspire.

He thought his bowels would let loose.

No matter his will, the thing drew his unblinking gaze. The stinging in his eyes grew, and wells of tears began pooling from them, their trails only slightly evident because of his cold sweat. The thing could not cease to be evil, that unfamiliar thread. Frayed it was. Then his eyes found something worse, upon the wounded cleansing bar, a single scarlet drop...

Terra was there, in the hall. He did not hear her. He heard nothing, not even himself. His vision narrowed, not caring what was good for his brain. Locked in a scowl, she stood, seeing what would inevitably come. Delightful. Sublime... revolting... life charged such bitter tolls.

"Freddy!"

Terra's voice ripped his attention away from the scarlet strand, its reddish, entrancing call... shoving his mind from one twisted sight to the other. Ringed eyes rent with fever. Burning anger. Locked in a torture zone, with horrid tension, silence thick, he felt fear as he never knew before. Her hair seemed gnarled and nappy, more than when she had gone out.

It had not been that long, had it?

Truth was, Freddy could not say. Terra would punish him. Anger blossomed, staining her countenance. Cold hatred showed plainly in her pupils. Racing, reckless adrenaline coursed through him, until his hands splayed spasmodically at his sides. A revolution had occurred. His nerves betrayed him. Emotionally naked before Terra, he shook as if he was riding winds of a maelstrom.

Terra stayed away. Shadows played tricks with his viewpoint. She seemed to change temperament almost immediately. Her rigid stance relaxed.

"Son, go get the chicken. Pick a fat one. I am not feeling well. I'm going to lie down. Wake me before supper if I fall asleep."

Right away, he did not believe it. It was impossible. She was being kind to him... then he saw her tell revealed. A sharp sparkle in her sentient eyes, speaking of desolation and bloody death. For the span of a blink, it gave him the one clue that might save him.

For that was when he knew he was doomed...

"Yes ma'am," Freddy said normally, though he wanted to run... not knowing what to do. Only craving to get somewhere, anywhere, but there. Shock came then, but not with horror. Terra's demeanor softened. Edginess vacated her eyes. They were no longer cold. She stood there for a time, not speaking. As he took the sight of her in, Freddy still felt trepidation, his heart fluttered as it did previously... a warning.

"I apologize child. I have not been feeling well."

"I haven't been myself lately. Although I despise having to do so, I fear I need to make a trip. There is a doctor over the hill. I am going to visit him. Perhaps he can patch me up... You are going to have to stay here alone tonight. The trip is too long to take in a day. Do you think you will be alright without me?"

Now, Freddy worried. Terra had never left him by himself overnight. Never. He hoped he was concealing his fears well enough to fool her. He doubted it, even as he replied, his voice betrayed him, quivering slightly, exposing his dread...

"I think so. Do you have anything you need me to do?"

God, he hated himself. You would think that throughout a lifetime of secrecy, he would be better at deception. He was not. He watched Terra's eyes, somehow understanding that when a woman lies, her eyes still reveal the truth...

"Well, I could not sleep at all again last night, so I spent some time in the shed. It is unruly, quite the mess. You can steer clear of that... and the turnips in the first two rows are ready to be harvested, could you be a dear and pick them for me?"

It was there, briefly, that hard spark of cruelty in her lying eyes. He pretended not to notice, feigning concern.

"Yes ma'am."

"I sure do wish you felt better. I'm going to miss you... Picking the turnips won't take long- it leaves me with a lot of time. Is there anything else?"

"Go ahead and do some weeding, but leave the shed be. I will handle it when I return. If you still have too much time on your hands, read the Bible."

"Okay. When are you going?"

He hoped it was soon. Freddy had no idea what he would do while she was away. He wanted to run, but the truth was, he had no idea where to go.

"Good. I am going to wash up. After I am done, I will cook you some breakfast. The trader was by before dawn, I bought us some fresh bacon. How does that sound?"

"Delicious. Thanks!"

He meant it. He loved the trader's bacon. It had never occurred to him that the vendor and he had never met. An early riser, he supposed.

"You are welcome, Freddy dear. Now be a good boy and get that chicken. I will put it in broth before I leave. There is some dough in that bowl over there, you can make the noodles."

Terra walked away, but he felt no relief. He tried not to think about that hair, the scarlet drop. Going outside, he went to the henhouse, and chose the fattest hen. He winced as he put its head on the chopping block, and watched in fascination as its headless body ran amuck for the brief time it took for death to override its nerves. If he lived a thousand years, he thought he would never understand why chickens did that. Goats did not. Neither did deer. Spasms in death seemed normal. Running did not. Busying himself with plucking and cleaning the hen did nothing to remove the nagging memory of the hair, or the drop.

By the time he went inside, he was deeply troubled. Even the bright morning sun had failed to make him feel better. Usually it did. Somehow feeling its warmth had always helped, until that day.

He found Terra seated at the nook when he entered the kitchen, hen in tow. Her hair, combed and damp, her eyes less ringed. Her voice tired, but kind.

"Could you bring that here? I would like to see how well you did..."

Normally, he would have been frightened further, but he doubted that was possible. Without a word, he brought the hen to Terra for inspection.

"See? I knew you had it in you."

A compliment? Hair raised on the nape of his neck, telling him to beware. In all his years with her, Terra was not complimentary; she was often the opposite, trite, unfair... Her eyes kept striking Freddy- in places he could not fathom... but just then, they seemed sad.

"Thanks," he said offhandedly, sounding awkward, his voice shaking, while uttering only a single syllable.

"Put it in the sink. I will get started with breakfast in a second. Before I start, come and have a seat."

His heart hammered, his guts flipped. A cold stream of sweat rolled down his back. Speaking again, he was surprised he sounded normal.

"Yes ma'am."

Attempting to appear nonchalant, Freddy went to the sink, doing as Terra told him. Nothing could have prepared him for what came next. The cleansing bar was gone... his knees buckled, and he lost his balance, rapping his chin on the edge of the counter smartly. It all came quickly, his returning to his feet, attempting to regain his composure.

"Are you alright?"

A tense silence followed Terra's remark, seemingly an hour; realistically it lasted merely a couple seconds...

"Uh yeah. I just slipped, that's all." He rubbed his chin as he replied, feeling it already swelling, making his sore jaw feel taut.

"You should watch where you're going. Come and sit down."

Terra's voice was clipped, and to Freddy, uncaring.

"Yeah."

He seated himself beside her. Uncharacteristically, she took his hand. His pulse accelerated, racing once again. The sweat returned, warmer this time, dampness soaking his palms, streams rolling down his spine, under his pits.

"I wasn't going to tell you this, but there is a chance my trip might take longer than I hope. There is something wrong with me Freddy, frightfully wrong."

No kidding, he thought, as she pressed on.

"You might have to stay alone for a while. I am unsure. If that's the case, eat as you see fit, I will not trouble you over it. A growing boy needs nourishment. If I am not back within a day or two, kill a goat. It should keep you fed for longer than the hens. It would be best if you saved them for last, eat the ones who do not lay eggs first. I hate doing this, but it is better I take care of myself. I am of no use to anyone in this sorry condition. I hope you understand."

Freddy sat silently. She was lying for sure. He could not run. She would know... The sweat stopped, going dry. He forced himself to answer, fearing her response. Again, he pretended to be concerned...

"What is wrong?"

As soon as he asked, he knew he should not have.

"If I knew that, I would not need to visit a doctor!"

Terra did not raise her voice, but her response was grating. Then, as quickly as her anger showed itself, it vanished, as if in thin air.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay boy. I am just agitated."

"I understand. I am worried too."

A genuine response, he was concerned, only it was for himself.

"I will be leaving soon after we eat. Leave the shed alone. It is chaotic, but I have a plan. I will sort it out. If you get restless, dig a pit. I will bring us a hog to roast after the doctor fixes me."

Boy? Dig a pit? Now his concern was not concern at all. Panicked, his palms began to itch, as fat beads of sweat clung to his brow, until they rolled uncaringly into his eyes.

"Yes ma'am. Please get well. I don't want to live without you long."

Terra searched his eyes, as he made a conscious effort to relax them.

"Very well," she replied, dropping his hand dismissively.

"Now, about breakfast."

It turned out to be the finest meal they had ever shared. Freddy's favorites- fat strips of bacon, eight each, laid out beside three eggs, sunny side up, four fluffy buttermilk biscuits and boysenberry jelly. Terra said little else, and if she did speak, her words were pleasant. She prattled about scripture, recommending passages from the dog-eared bible she kept at her side.

Before she left, bearing a backpack, a walking stick, and two jugs of water, Freddy had looked in her eyes. They were not flinty, not unkind, reflecting love and a virtue he had not known in them. Watching her walk away, Freddy felt remorse and a foreboding that riveted him there, gazing after Terra as she disappeared in the dense trees.

When at last he could see her no more, he sighed, feeling a fright he had not thought he could have- uncertainty.

Terra felt his eyes upon her back as she went, trying to appear casual, letting the warming rays of Sol ward away the destruction of dusk, the haunt of the insidious Luna. All through it, she had wanted to run. Her leg would not permit it. The hunt had taken a hunk of it, and it was only through iron, heated to an ember red and placed on her unwitting flesh that she still did not bleed. Too many years had transposed themselves over the sense of impending doom she felt for her simply to let them go. She had checked the stars, read her charts- Freddy's. She saw his secrets there... She hoped that she had done enough, that his curiosity would keep. His path, hers, well those depended on this trek.

Under the canopy of the oaken forest, Terra felt the physical omen of her enemy. A shadow lingered cold and unrepentant over the veil of reality. She saw the ritual she performed, the rites desperate and defiant. She felt her presence, the cloaked one, and Terra felt the hold the maiden held over the land. Jezebel swayed many away from the shadows of the great beasts that reigned this expansive forest and the swards beyond. There was not much in the way of hope, she sensed the wound festering. Little time remained. She had no other choice; she must go to the shaman, though they had never met eye to eye.

Perhaps, even if old Blayock would not heal her, then at least he would send one of his ravens to Van, whom a winged messenger might still find in this realm. Storms were brewing, the order must know of them.

Some miles off from the homestead, she no longer felt Freddy's penetrative mind. There she sat, against a tall oak, whom she knew as Maggie, glad for Sol's rays cutting like a magical sword through the clouds and treetops to lie upon her chest. The lovely caress of the sun warmed her heart, and Terra found hope for her kind, the Galendiers, whom the one god forsook. She pulled out the napkin and ate the bacon she brought along, knowing that as she chewed slowly she would not dine on cooked flesh after that instance. It would be some time off when this form would contain her spirit again. She drank deeply from the water jug she held, as she savored the meat, praying within her mind to the god of balance, asking for courage in the face of adversity, for cleverness in low odds.

Her lunch was the last act she languished over on the jaunt, and the last time she donned her mortal disguise. Finishing the meal brought back the burden the restful nourishing had granted, and her beloved Sol, the sun god who brought all life and watched all deaths indifferently in his solar dominion became obscured by clouds. Herein, as she sensed an angry storm brewing, she felt Dagon's eye upon her, and she cursed him as she had always.

Terra emptied her pack into the soil, procuring first the jewel of Isis, secured on a golden rope, which she hung over her neck, to ward away the unwanted. This necklace was a gift from a vampire Terra once knew, whom had found it in a tomb near the burial place of Ra... it blinded Dagon. In response, the god of storms gave protest, and rain pelted suddenly through the trees as lightning cracked and thunder clapped. This did not dissuade Terra from her task, as she bent over a bowl, swirling her sacramental potion, which would ease her transformative flesh and sooth the aches of growing bones as she shifted...

Blayock was long off, an arduous run.

Freddy felt exhausted early, as if his energies magically turned to mist, floating away in the blackening sky. He felt a dimming shadow, creeping over his mind. Gooseflesh excited his trembling arms, and he felt little desire to stand. He lay on his bed, the dog-eared Holy Bible held aloft by his ever-weakening arms at midday, his eyes heavy and wanting sleep. It was a battle lost, sleep was claiming him, and he was worthless against its fortuitous embrace. He meant to stay awake, had thought he could for once see the moon. Drooping now, sleep inevitable, his eyes stole over one last line from Jeremiah, as the Bible sat lazily on his chest:

"I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth..."

In his dream, he stood in a glade. Disjointed images flitted by in a surreal abundance. Rings of smoke rose at the edge of a campfire, and he watched as figures, mostly shadows masked by the glowing embers that hurt his eyes, laughed gaily over words he did not comprehend. He felt his stomach rumble, and smelled the raw meat a bearded man struck over the flames on a forked stick. Within the dream state he was the alien, he did not sense so much as know it, and he wondered why it felt so natural.

Then as he snuck towards the joyful group, a black cloud erased the dream, leaving nothing but an expansive abyss in its wake. Freddy slept like the dead, and it was hours before he woke to birds singing and rays of sun peeking through the shades. He felt angry then, sure it had been Terra. Positive she had slipped something into his breakfast. His head was cloudy. Sitting upright, he went to wipe away the sweat from his brow, noting he must need a bath, because he felt foul. His hand came away crimson. For the longest time he just stared at the red swatches, his stained arms, and the black grit under his nails...

He was frightened, though he was not. Confused, but clearheaded, Freddy stood and walked throughout the house looking for any evidence he could find that would help him understand how he came to be filthy, nude, and bloodstained... Going outdoors, he found the hen he killed, and this offered his answer, which he readily accepted as it had happened once before. It had always been his job to harvest the chickens, he must have been dreaming about it and sleep walked. Terra had caught him doing the same thing before, leading him inside, and telling him the next day after inquiring over what he recalled.

Freddy cleaned the chicken properly and brought it inside, glancing with solemnity at the place the cleansing bar once rested. Everything was still a mystery, a way unknown. Sighing, he exited the kitchen and drew a hot bath, placing the hen inside a pot to boil. Having already decided on soup, Freddy was half there. Despite all of his contemptuous feelings for Terra, he missed her. Her cooking had a flair his could never match. He scrubbed away the stains from his hands, never giving them a second thought. Wondering at length over Terra's haggard appearance, the frayed wits she displayed before her departure vexed him.

The bath was warm, and despite having slept the prior evening, Freddy fell asleep. Dreams did not find their way into the sheet of blackness he lay under for some time. Eventually his senses picked up the aroma of cooked chicken, and his eager stomach prompted his wakefulness. Cleansed, he stood up, stepped out, and began pat drying the cold water from his puffy, wrinkled skin with an over-sized towel.

He went about deboning the chicken, a simple task, as the meat fell away from the bones easily. He added his noodles to the broth, and vegetables, carrots, peas, and celery. Sitting outside on the stoop, he watched the darkened clouds as they lolled against the azure sky like cloaked villains. Freddy had completely lost himself; he could not recall Terra's instructions. He just sat staring at the sky, waiting. What he was waiting for, even he could not say. Certainly, it was not the soup. Something other than the clouds that crept like death over the sapphire sky the cumulous shape shifters put their stranglehold on lurked in the back of his brain. A darkness fell over the yard, deep, over the emeralds of Terra's garden, and grey over the chicken coup, gave off a surreal impression. On this ordinary day, Freddy's mind had fits. All seemed to be in its rightful place, but something was decidedly off...

The pot made hissing sizzles, stirring him from his seated position, and like a robot, he rose, obeying the over boiling fluid beckoning him. Nearly catatonic with self-absorption, he mechanically shut off the burner and pulled the soup from the heat, sloshing some over the stovetop. Terra would have been livid had she seen this, though he did not notice the mess he had made. Walking away, he went to his room to lie down, forgetting entirely to eat.

He did not feel right. Shutting his eyes against his swimming head and the nausea it held, he fought the waves, a growing headache... his vague concern.

Night came rapidly. He watched its shadows like long fingers at first, tickling the surfaces of the family room, growing like morphing beasts in the pale afterglow of the sun...

Mocking laughter followed her homeward. Blayock had been unreceptive, unwilling. The change had come. She had no way to ebb it. Why the old mage did not lie dead in a drying pool of cooling blood that very moment was beyond her comprehension. Blayock had his strengths, but wounded or not, she could have done away with him. In this form, few represented a threat.

Feline and swift, Terra ran, darting across glades with the ease of a gazelle. Wildlife parted before her like the Red Sea did for Moses, dashing to hiding places she knew all too well. They need not fear her tonight. Her nose drove her, like a beacon she smelt the blood she must spill. It was too late for anything else. Even in this shape, Terra felt sorrow, knowing where her selfishness had driven her, where it drove her now.

As if in league with the dark spirits who hold dominion over this realm, the clouds spit and thunder crackled as lightning forked the sky. She slatted her eyes against the sheeting torrents of precipitation, and pressed her limbs harder, energized by the damp. Deterring her seldom occurred. Nothing impeded her swiftness, or delayed her if she set her mind against it.

Terra was going home; the gods would just have to play other games...

Inside the shed, Freddy was aghast. Seeing the stains, blood rust, smelling the inhuman scent, which left him doubled at the waist- heaving. Disbelieving eyes scanned the sight before him, laid coldly on a slab. At first glance, the cleansing bar, sitting in a puddled mess of gelatinous skin, fats, and blood- before what appeared to be a man. Until he looked at the spot where hands would have been... What was he seeing? Had the bar performed this cleansing?

The bar was a weapon, a tool to wipe away the disguises of beasts amongst men...

What it revealed... Did Terra stop such beasts?

"Why did you come in here when I asked you not to?"

Terra's firm voice made Freddy jump, and he reeled around, adrenaline surging within him. She looked vital then, and he... A craving swept over him, and he fell, bones stretching swiftly, fur and claws sprouting from beneath his pale skin...

Terra's eyes widened as she backed away. Hearing his bestial cry rising sharply from the shed behind her... she fled on all fours, her present form could not match threat for threat this time. Freddy rapidly shifted to a shape Terra had held hope against facing, and she, a mere witch, could not stop him. Her powers could not stop his kind. So she ran... and he after her, as Luna stared blankly upon them.

Freddy found his freedom within that first hunt, his place in the night woods, where his hauntings would continue, and those who wandered the dark forest were lost and never heard from again. His red eyes rimmed with his wolfing hunger, as his teeth snarled at the wind, eager to taste Terra's blood, as she prayed to gods who did not care.

Read the full upcoming novel:

"Favor of the Gods"

By Donny Swords soon.

The Cleansing Bar

Copyright 2014 Donny Swords

Sandra

The town had always been a sleeper. This did not matter. Life can be quiet when you want it to be. Living is not always hard. Hell, it is as natural as breathing. Things are not as they seem.

Sandra believed this. The damn thing could be round for all she cared about it. The world, that was. Trends held no gist where she lived.

Woods are dark places. In the middle of the Bible Belt, they got even darker. Sandra could not have given a damn. She was 76, what was there to give a hoot about?

Life is full of surprises.

Like that morning, when she walked. Some days, walking became an issue. Others, it was an all-out war. Like today, hell she had to fight to get her knickers on. Only God knew how her shoes had made it on her feet. Simple as that, she stood frozen in arthritic paralysis halfway to the mailbox. That damn arthritis came in fits, she should have known better anyhow. Any time it was this hard to get dressed she ought to stay in bed...

The woods were deep where Sandra lived. Time came harder, but it kept her moving. She would freeze for sure if she stopped for too long. That kind of life was for cop-outs, soft people. In these parts, things came away with splinters on them if they came at all.

Sandra had lived long enough to endure her fair share. The world held staggering beauty, but it was full of abundant bunk as well. What difference did it make? The whole world seemed to want to move on without her. This put her at odds with it. She did not hanker to perish.

Sandra's 76 years accomplished several key things. Of all of them, the smooth ones, and hardened too made her love life. Life offered more each day, if one would only let it.

That thought got her moving.

Sandra Tanner would rather fight her condition and go on than be one of the softies. They just gave in, whining. Yeah it hurts to die. It hurts to fight it too. This was every morning, wrestling with death. All her thoughts circled on it.

Everyone she knew had succumbed to it. Even her beloved fell.

She had other things to do but dwell on her issues. Some effort got her creaking legs moving. Her place was slightly less than a mile down from the main road. The post office refused to deliver down her long drive. She made the walk most days, when her knees permitted.

The drive, a pair of ruts for most part, ran through the deep woods, followed by a clear-cut. The forest was a wild one, overgrown- gone to nature. Needing a way to tame her land, Sandra sold the timber. It cost nothing to clear off the fifteen acres. The timber sales lined her pockets. Ideal. Cutting the trees was the hardest part.

It was for the best. An old woman walking to her mailbox alone required a clear view. Dark, shadows even, bothered her. Things lurked in the dark spots- had to. She had seen them on the property, wolves, predatory cats, even bears. The cats loved the shadows. Homicidal things creep in the dark.

Crowded places, busy ones, were not her forte. The open field at least seemed less permissive to misdeeds. She could only hope.

Arriving at the crest of the hill, where a view of the clear cut opened, Sandra stopped for breath. It was peaceful at first. The temperatures were warm for Summer Vale, but pleasurable to her arthritis just the same. The walking had loosened her up. She actually felt good for a change.

Sandra was early.

A few nearby birds sat chirping and this was the only noise, other than the slight moan of the wind brushing her hair back lightly. She would wait where she was. Marilyn did a passable job as a mail carrier, but talking to her was another matter.

A gleam flashed across the field and Sandra saw Marilyn's mail truck turn the corner to Thayne Street. Then, she saw something else, from the parameters of her vision, where things stretch and skew. Something shadowed, scary, and silent. One awkward jerk later, it was gone... vanished, poof!

Not daring to ask herself the tough questions, Sandra stood on the hill. Despite the warm day, she shivered, inwardly and outwardly. Her eyes tried to follow the shadow, but it had gone. Despite the view, and its lack of trees, the field still had a few small Muscle Woods. Her eyes froze there, on the trees, wishing she had not left them standing, seeing nothing, and not knowing why.

Something remained hidden in the dark shadows the trees cast, and now she could not see it. Sandra scratched her neck. Something bugged her about the shadows she saw.

When scanning the tree line proved fruitless, she debated going home. The mail would be there soon. Should she stay and wait, or just go home? Home was a powerful motivator. No reason to fret over mail, the issue was whether she wanted to stand still, while the thing that made the strange shadows hunted her. She had not gotten this old without great instincts. A voice inside her, working on her nerves, her guts, told her something...

It said, run.

Running was another matter. Sandra left her sprinting suit at home. There would not be any running from her today.

The sound of the mail lady's jeep changed the direction of her thoughts. Sandra was just about to turn back when thoughts of Marilyn, the mail carrier, sent shocks to her system. The shadow had not headed towards her. It went towards the road.

The jeep angled towards the turnaround. Marilyn often stopped and walked the mail over from the turn out.

Probably safer, Sandra reasoned.

Sandra did not think it was safe, and was about to open her mouth to warn Marilyn when a shrill shriek shot by, sonically tearing reality apart. The cry split the air, tinged by agony and regretful sorrow. All emotions tied to dread were present in the scream. Horror came thru plainly. Fright showed its ugly side. Revulsion addressed disgust and bitter distaste. Helplessness and despair settled in. Nuances in sadness and powerlessness tagged along. All of it in one scream...

Her eyes followed the sound.

Whatever was happening was behind the jeep. Sandra could not see the whole incident. The zombie's silhouette and Marilyn's spasmodic legs, jumping and twitching before her final throes took her had been enough. It wore a businessman's suit, and it meant business. Marilyn stopped screaming, leaving behind deafening silence.

Shortly after, the figure emerged from behind the jeep, framed in sunlight, and sinfully still ensconced in shadows. Sandra caught clear sight of only one feature, the thing's hungry, malevolent, sentient eyes. Grey eyes, not cold as much as calculated, eyes she would never forget.

The significance of a moment makes all the difference. Often passed over as unimportant, seldom does a single moment change everything. Scarlet ribbons, dappled by sunlight, spread like missiles through the air. They shot out, and they too disappeared into the shadows, the same as those silver eyes had.

Sandra got the gumption to get moving before the actual moment. Then, the eyes returned briefly, long enough to unsettle her, to mold her, to make her frightened... desperately and deathly afraid.

She knew who he was.

She got moving. Her body responded, somehow granting her a reprieve. She was not going fast, but she was moving.

Get to the house... Get to the house...

Her brain did not register more. Pressure does funny things to people. Sandra felt sideways.

A zombie killed Marilyn?

Looked like it.

Rheumatism was the last thing from her mind. Gone were her years and thoughts of death, her present and reality had awoken her one desire. The desperate need to live quickened her.

She pressed harder, debating whether to call the Sheriff or the State Troopers first. Deciding on the State Troopers seemed easiest. Their field office was closer.

Her mind raced, though every backwards glance rewarded her nothing to go on. She had no visual confirmation of what she feared. The eyes had vanished, albeit, their memory had not diminished.

Aches tugged at her in several ways, and sharp jabs, stabbing darts of pain rippled in places. She ignored her body's protests. She was trying to save her hide for crying out loud.

The silence felt like a prophecy, her open prison without sound. Melancholy snuck its way into her psyche, attempting to derail her escape. Consternation came into play. Remembering those calculated eyes, dead, though animated, dull, but sentient, left her pleading with the Lord under her huffing breath.

She had stopped looking over her shoulder, straining to hear the warning before death's claws gripped her. If Dietrich had gone mad, well, then that bastard meant more than trouble. He always had been a pebble in her shoe. He was back there, somewhere, a boulder now, waiting to bowl her over.

Intuition had always aided Sandra, and now as she fled and her cabin grew near, she knew what she must do. She could not have said how such awareness led her where she went. Her actions came across as desperation, though they carried her amnesty.

Temporarily, she heard rustling. Perhaps it was twenty yards back. Maybe the crackling of twigs and the soft crumbling of leaves fell twenty yards behind her. Perhaps he was closer.

Her voice escaped her unwillingly.

"What do you want? Leave me be!"

A moan, closer than she thought issued from her pursuer... something, the cord of sanity, wound so tightly inside her brain, came unraveled. Sanity eluded her.

In a panic, she bolted, forgetting age, cursing God and gravity. She lunged at the front porch, caught her right toe on the stoop and fell, face forward, into the front door. Her face smacked the jamb, as she sprung quickly to her feet, depressing the lever on the door handle.

Essentially, she should have died there, outside her home. Dietrich was at the step before she hauled herself through the door, his fingers brushing her dress lightly. Then the door slammed in front of the zombie, bolted, and locked. Sandra grabbed a dining chair, wedging it under the handle.

Presently, she cursed herself for selling her shotgun to Deputy Washington. She glanced about. There was no way. She could not save herself. Nothing within her home, especially her, would stop Dietrich...

His eyes had not lied.

Violently, the door began to rumble as he shook the handle. The world had shrunk. Gone were the birds, the trees... friends... A single foe was all that remained.

As suddenly as it began, the door stopped trembling.

A ragged breath gushed from her lips.

Time melted away, leaving only the present. Fear shot like electricity throughout her. She suddenly felt weak.

Dietrich's silence was worse than his hauntings.

Then, the quiet broke... with a crash, and the tinkle of windowpanes falling in splinters and glass shards dropping onto the tile in the family room. Sandra shot a sideways glace towards the din. Cold with shock at the sound, she felt ill, though action found her once more seeking salvation. His eyes became the catalyst for her every deed.

She had to escape those eyes.

Rushing, she bounded towards the kitchen, halfway skidding to her destination by sliding on the cool tile on her heels. She heard him hauling himself through the window... His feet touching down on the broken glass...

Sandra ripped open the hatch to the root cellar, recalling the axe down there. Jerrod had put a heavy bolt inside the lid, telling her, "Look, Grandma, I put this here in case you get stuck. You never know what might happen. An elderly woman without firearms in the middle of nowhere might find this useful. Let's hope not. It's there just in case, okay?"

"Sure," she had said, "but it seems silly."

The bolt did not seem silly now, as she closed it, praying aloud.

"Lord Jesus, grant me the strength to persevere."

Adrenaline betrayed her then, as a cramp clinched her calf, causing her to buckle. Above, she heard Dietrich, his feet clomping abruptly across the floor.

It was then, as she huddled on the steps, too weak to descend towards the axe leaning on the wall, that hope left her. Horror swept in as she realized her ailing leg planned to keep her where she sat. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she imagined the world outside.

What had made the world change?

Why was Dietrich Baldric standing on the hatch above her head, howling like a man wolf?

The howling went on for hours.

Finally, Baldric fell silent.

She stayed there, barely daring to breathe and hardly convinced she wanted to anymore, imagining his grey eyes boring through the hatch, surveying her.

She heard footfalls above, and to her dismay- moaning.

The creepy grunts and groans issued from several throats.

With a whimper, she found the strength to back down the steps, sliding on her buttocks until she reached the axe. Picking it up by the hickory handle felt somewhat reassuring, but she knew her mind frame was nonsense.

There was no way to ascertain whether it was night or day, and Sandra was grateful. There was only one entrance to the cellar, and there was food and drink...

There she waited, clutching the axe, her life preserver in a sea of chaos, wondering why she fought so hard to live in a world gone wrong.

This story was excerpted from

The Bitter Ends, Other Side of Town.

©2014 Donny Swords

A Chance Meeting?

It is such a travesty,

You thinking that you could escape me,

For all the blood you shed

Whatever thoughts reside in your head

I see

You cannot escape me

Time is on my side

None can hide

I am the fire that burns.

The wheel that turns,

Never spurned, nor slowed.

I am the blood that flows,

Erasing all you know,

As the blade digs deeper, deeper, into your soul.

Down you go.

Deeper.

You've met the Reaper

©2014 Donny Swords

The Indie Collaboration

& Darker Places Present:

CHRIS RAVEN

Chris Raven was born in south London just shy of 50 years ago. He originally started out in Theatre in the 1980s but he became side-tracked by health and social care, where he has made his living for the past 20 or so years. More recently he has found his way back to the creative arts by contributing a number of short stories to the Indie collaboration's series of free anthologies.

He has also contributed illustrations to other author's works and has been coordinating a shared writing project with other new writers called 'Tall Stories'. A relative newcomer to fiction, he is currently experimenting with a number of different formats and genres, including poetry, short storytelling and playwriting.

The Worm's Head Manuscript

Part One:

A Letter to His Father by Wilbert Felten-Hayes

Dear Father;

I write you this letter on my train journey home, in disgrace as you know, after my expulsion from the university. I write to you out of cowardice as much as anything else, if the truth is known. I would rather tell you my tale while I am still hundreds of miles away than in person and face your incredulity and disbelief. This letter is no attempt on my part to give excuse for my behavior; you raised me better than that Father. I take full responsibility for all my actions, the result of naivety, obsession and poor judgment, rather than of malice. It is a testament to my own failings that I now flee the dishonor and ridicule left behind me on campus. It is only your intervention that I have to thank for not now being on my way to the penitentiary.

Where am I to start Father, I suppose at the beginning, on that first September day on campus in 1923. So proud I was back then, only two and a half years ago. But that was before the madness took me. Do you remember how excited I was when I left home that year? I had secured a place in a renowned and prestigious New England University, my first desired choice, my whole life ahead of me. I find it hard now to recognize that young hopeful antiquities student and doubt I will ever feel such joyful excitement ever again.

Student life started well, and I quickly settled in. I studied hard and made friends. One such friend was that woman; you no doubt have heard her name, being implicated in the events that now leave me running home. I cannot bring myself to write her name now, but back then she was just another promising young student I befriended. Don't fear father, our friendship was very much intellectual, never romantic. I barely registered her as a woman at all. I was purely drawn to her quite substantial intellect. It was as if her mind held secrets from beyond time, the knowledge from all the great scientists, artists and philosophers down the ages. She was also a skilled hypnotist with an unsettling party trick. She would invite you to stare into her eyes and then, for just a bare second, you got the sense that you were seeing yourself through her eyes.

It was she who convinced me to join Professor Caldwell's tuition group the following term, for easy extra credits and the opportunity for a number of exciting field trips. Did you know that New England has many and numerous Indian ruins, many dating back hundreds of years? There are sacrificial slabs scattered all round the university town, even on the island in the river that runs through the town itself.

Professor Caldwell was captivating at first, knowledgeable and able to impart his enthusiasm for the history of the occult to others, as if his love for his subject was somehow a contagion. You no doubt know he was a recent immigrant from Britain, mayhap his accent added to his allure.

For the remainder of '23 and most of '24 we explored the local towns, shrines and antiquity sites. A blasted patch of wasteland that has refused to let anything grow there for almost a century, a village surrounded by ancient sacrificial stones and a coastal town who have rejected Christianity for an Eastern fish god. All fascinating discoveries, made more so by being still relevant in this modern time. These 'finds' were not the cause of my downfall however, that came later in 1925.

Professor Caldwell suggested it, The Worm's Head Manuscript, an original leather bound tome- some 1,000 years old. This initially fascinated me- the sheer agelessness of the document. I studied the manuscript every chance I had, sitting huddled over the tome in the restricted section of the University's library. I became obsessed by its perfect timeless pages. I couldn't believe it was so old, so intact was its condition that I frequently asked the curator if it was a later copy, only to be told time and again that it was an original. I do not know if you can appreciate this improbability, a manuscript of that age... Gods, it really should have been dust. Its contents too were fascinating, being a handwritten journal in medieval runic Norse. It offered an account of an ill-fated sea voyage, the crew of a longship attacked by sea monsters, a typical Viking Saga, if it were not for the divine intervention of Odin.

I had been studying the old Nordic and Celtic languages as part of my degree. I agreed to translate the manuscript for Professor Caldwell, to attempt to decode a hidden spell, purported to be hidden within its pages. I took copious notes, which I discussed in intimate detail with Caldwell and my friend, often into the early hours of the morning. Around this time- March 1925, I began having vividly strange nightmares. Maybe this was a forewarning of the madness to follow? I did not know. Every night, uneasy, terrifying dreams and dastardly, debilitating nightmares came and went as quickly as they began. I have no memory of these dreams now; they completely left my distressed mind around the time of the incident, which now compels me to return home. Thankfully, I kept a dream journal and gratefully, if the contents of this journal are true, I still have no recollections of them. I was not alone; if you recall from the papers, there was an epidemic of strange nightmares recorded all round the world at the time. All starting in March and inexplicitly ending in April. But I have gotten ahead of myself father...

Try as I might I could not find what Professor Caldwell sought. He started to become impatient and fearful, telling me that without this spell everyone, both good and ill, was lost. He spoke in apocalyptic terms of ancient mythical demons waiting eagerly on the threshold of our world, ready to cause havoc and destruction. I feared for Caldwell's sanity and it was for this reason I headed my friend's advice. We believed if Professor Caldwell could see the book himself, it would somehow placate him. So I did the unthinkable, I borrowed the unique tome from the library- I stole it. Believe me Father, I had every intention of returning it, but I no longer had it to return.

At the first opportunity they had, Caldwell and my friend left town and were gone, the book with them. What is the criminal parlance popular today in the penny dreadfuls? I was a patsy. They had fooled me and used me to steal a priceless work of antiquity.

If, as I was led to believe- must believe- for I have read the proof of it in the pages of the Worm's Head Manuscript... I have seen the proof of it upon its cover... and if I am to believe the Professor needed the spell within to prevent the rise of evil upon the world- I assume he was successful. I think the dreams were an omen of this threatened cataclysm. It is no coincidence they stopped soon after his disappearance.

Why am I so sure father? Is this letter no more than the addled ramblings of a disgraced wayward son trying desperately to find excuse for his misdeeds? Maybe so, I will allow you to decide for yourself. I have enclosed within this letter all my notes and translations from the Worm's Head Manuscript. As you read these ungodly transcriptions, remember the original was a thousand years old and should have been dust. I saw the proof of these things father and of the disaster that was near missed. I saw it in the faint trident like Algiz symbol that was embossed on the manuscript's ancient brown leather cover.

Yours in all sincerity,

Wilbert.

Part Two:

A Translation of the Worm's Head Manuscript by Wilbert Felten-Hayes:

My name is Magnus the Wise. I am a Dane and a scholar. Some might even say that I am a mystic... Indeed, I have some talent with the Runes. Odin, who surely needs no introduction, protects us as my crew makes repairs to our ship. I watch them as I begin to record the events that took place on this day, the 22nd of March in the year 925 according the new Christian calendar. I sit on this Celt accused beach and write of the fate that befell my Jarl, Jorund the blessed and the valiant sacrifice he made for all who remain.

We were a band of friends, kin even, Jorund and I, with Skessi the Scald, Raynor the Bear and Svein Lightfoot. Jorund the Blessed! I laugh as it is I who blessed him. It is I that tattooed the rune of protection upon his shoulder and imbued it with magic before every battle. This is how Jorund was able to fight naked with such fury and abandon, striking fear into the hearts of his enemies when they realized no weapon or harm would befall him.

Our small band had left our home in Denmark many years before, to seek our fortunes in Danelaw. With our Drakkar longship we raided the Mercian coast for many years. Scamasax is as swift a vessel, and nimble to as any seafarer might wish for. It is small, only thirty oars in total, though it holds a good strong crew of able seamen, warriors all and true. Alas we will never see the likes of them again... I drink to them all, Aki, Harald, Eirik, Olvald and the others and I wish them good feasting in the halls of Valhalla. I would like to see Frodi's wife Sigrid manage to drag him form that particular mead hall for a change. It is only I and a handful of us who survive now, thanks to Odin and the task he bestowed upon Jorund and I. A task I now begin to retell as I sit on this beach surrounded by the bodies of our fallen comrades and the creatures they valiantly slew. The other survivors nervously watch the sea before us as they repair our ship, occasionally casting a wary eye towards the green hills that lay behind. But I know we are safe from further attack, Odin taught me a spell to protect us. I have faith in its protection, as I should, for it came from All-Father.

As I said, we were once raiders but that ended a few years ago when the tide of fate turned against us Danes and the north again fell under the rule of the Saxon and their king, Edward of Wessex. Actively discouraged from raiding, we were forced to sail escort between Danelaw and Eire for a Knarr, a lackluster merchant vessel. It was on one such journey that the storm took us.

The storm was like no other I have seen. Huge roaring waves tossed the Scamasax across the sea like a child might skim a stone across a pond. Svien held us firm at the tiller while Ragnor seemed to grow in size and strength as he yelled and threatened the crew to "Pull!" Skessi sat at the front, back to the bow where he laughed, and cursed and sung bawdy songs to encourage the crew, telling them they were far too mean and ugly to die that day- but if they were taken to the bottom of the sea, he would buy them all a drink in Valhalla.

We were washed south; off our usual course and it was a miracle we were not sunk. Maybe there is, as Skessi often boasted, magic in the old scald's songs, though I would never have said so to his face. Fearing capsize, we run ourselves aground on the beach of a pretty little cove which was sheltered from the storm. The fishing boats moored to a small wooden jetty hardly buffeted despite the tempest raging beyond the cove's natural embrace. A small path ran up through the sand continuing continued into the lush green hillock parallel to the beach.

Disorientated, we felt unsure where we were. Svein, our pilot, suggested the possibility that we might have landed in Dyfed. Such news caused the crew some concern, as none of us had met a Celt before, and so we were uneasy- as we believed them to be magical and sinister. Raynor snorted and sniffed the air, convinced magic was there. Nobody disagreed; the cove's sides were far too shallow to give so much protection from the storm.

As we disembarked and secured the Scamasax to the beach, villagers began to hesitantly descend down the path through the hillock's long grass. As they drew near across the beach all our fears about Celts were confirmed. An odd race, the Celts, we thought, as we watched them come lumbering down the beach. They all shared the same strange features to some degree. Large hairless foreheads, small underdeveloped ears, fat rubbery skin and large staring, unblinking eyes.

Nary did a single man amongst them appear as if they would make a decent warrior; they did not even have beards. They all looked like crones and witches, even the men folk, if you could call them that. They disgusted us and as we hadn't pillaged for many years and there was no edict to prevent us from doing so in Dyfed, Jorund commanded that we turn on them. We raped, we killed, and we stole until the villagers were pacified. They put up more of a fight then we had expected at first and some of our numbers were injured but they were no match for our strength, armor, axes and swords. Some of the handful that survives with me here now was among those first injured. I expect they think themselves more fortunate now than they did when they first took their wounds.

We found a church and three priests hiding within. Grotesque looking creatures, the worst we had seen, immensely fat with hideously bulbous faces, pasty gray skin and the same large unblinking eyes. We slew them and stole their golden headdresses. We demanded more gold and it took the killing of three more villagers before we conceded to their pleas that the village held no more. The gold, they said, was found on Worm's Head, a small islet south of the bay. They gave Jorund a black stone and told him to throw it into the sea from the islet, saying it will make the gold magically rise from the sea. We threatened them all with a slow torturous death if they lied.

I remained with our wounded and a few guards while the rest made their way to the islet. After a while we could hear the sound of battle, so we started to make our way back to the beach. The villagers had begun to grow in confidence and had started to follow us down the path. Some of the men folk had even armed themselves with staves and pitchforks.

Twenty warriors had left for the Worm's Head and only ten retuned, fighting and running from hideous gray-green skinned frog-like fish headed monsters; sea trolls, that loped and hopped behind them. Two legs and two arms they had, like men, but they were large and powerful with big webbed hands and feet and quivering gills around fat bulbous necks. We regrouped, standing back to back on the beach, forming dual shield walls- to defend ourselves against the coordinated attacks from both the sea creatures and the villagers.

I saw Ragnor fall when he left the relative safety of the shield wall, enraged and swinging his great axe Ingrid; which he named after his wife. I saw Ingrid cleave into three of the sea monsters before Ragnor disappeared under a mass of spear and trident trusts. I did not see what happened to Svein but we collected what was left of his body and hope to offer him and all our comrades a decent funeral pyre before we leave this accursed beach. Skessi fell in the initial battle on Worm's Head, when the sea creatures rose from the sea. We had been tricked, the villagers had lied. It had not been gold that was summoned up from the depths when Jorund cast that black stone into the sea.

So we stood, back to back, brother defending brother, against the ferocious onslaught of the sea trolls and their human allies. All was lost, I admit it- we were done, our lines close to breaking. And then salvation, a horn that sounded so loud, it vibrated through the air like thunder, causing villager and Norse Man alike to fall to their knees holding our ears in terrible agony. The sea trolls seemed able to withstand the horn's sounding, maybe because they had no ears, not that I could discern. Instead of falling to the ground or even pressing their attack, they all fled. As the pain left my head, I looked up and saw them loping and hopping back towards the sea, the way they had come, towards the Worm's Head. Maybe it was once a giant worm, a sea serpent turned to stone leaving only its spawn, the creatures we fought that day.

Groggy and in pain, both Norse Men and the villager stood shakily and slowly upon their wearied feet. I remained on my knees, looking out to sea towards the source of the horn blast. So it was that I who first saw Odin come riding in that day.

From the sea he came, standing on a giant half clamshell, pulled by horned horses. Before anyone could react, the horses had pulled Odin's shell up the beach before us. All Father stood gazing at us all, a tall white bearded god in shimmering robes. Any remaining villager not quick enough to flee perished instantaneously as his gaze fell upon them- freezing their hearts. On us Norse Men, his gaze was much kinder. Jorund and his handful of men, who are with me now, were our only remaining crewmen... Odin fixed his gaze upon every single one of us in turn. No words were spoken- though we all understood. The village, and the creatures we fought were corrupted, heinous, and evil- this was true. Conversely, we were no innocent babes- thus a sacrifice was required of us, to protect our escape. It was I who Odin gave the spell, a similar spell to the charm I always placed upon Jorund's tattoo before each battle. It was Jorund who willingly volunteered and in turn I tore out his heart, using it to cast the spell that now protects us and our ship. As the others continue to make repairs, I bring this journal to a close. I will bind it well and keep it safe. I have a good piece of leather to use for its cover, it amazes me still- Jorund's tattoo upon my journal- the nightmare endured, Odin. Though this journey was a trial, I have awakened to the darkness, its powers granted to me by a god... For this, I am deeply grateful.

The End.

Copyright 2014 Chris Raven

The Sham

James trotted down the stairwell from the first floor flat he shared with his wife. He was fast approaching thirty-five and his waist was beginning to show its age. In a half-hearted attempt at staving off the spread, he had decided to use the stairs each morning instead of taking the lift. On this particular spring morning his new fitness regime nearly broke his neck.

James turned a bend and almost tripped over a young boy sitting on the stairs. James had to virtually jump over the lad to avoid them both crashing down the rest of the stairwell. He managed to grab the rail with both his hands, where he hung, bent almost double, with his arse sticking out over the void.

"Watch it there," James complained, "You're gonna get someone killed."

The boy sat huddled on the step, face down, hidden by his blond hair. He looked about ten years of age.

"Sorry Mister," He mumbled his voice heavy with crying. James sat down next to him on the step.

"That's alright," he said more gently, "What's your name?"

The boy looked up, quickly wiping away his tears.

"Marley," He mumbled, sniffing.

"Do you live here Marley?" James asked. The boy pointed upwards.

"Flat 614."

"What are you doing all the way down here?" he asked, surprised. The boy told him he was hiding but would not say why.

"You wouldn't believe me anyway," the boy explained.

"You'll be surprised what I'd believe Marley," James reassured him.

Marley looked up sheepishly, and asked him if he believed in ghosts.

"Actually I do," James quietly disclosed. He had never really spoken to anyone about this before, not too a living person anyway.

"Really?" Marley said hopefully, "Have you seen one?"

"Not exactly," He had to admit.

"Oh," Marley said, disappointed, "How do you know then?"

"Oh, I know!" James had a strong urge to defend his paranormal credentials, "I'm actually being haunted."

"Really?" Marley said excitedly, "Me too, I see them all the time, they're everywhere. What does yours look like?"

"I can't really see mine," James explained, feeling a little out of his depth now, "I've never really ever seen a ghost, not really." The boy looked disappointed. "She," James quickly added, "My ghost that is, she kind of steps inside people and controls them"

"Oh," Marley exclaimed, relieved, "You have a Skinwalker."

"Yes, I suppose that would describe it," James confirmed uncertainly, he was being distracted by movement down on the landing below them.

"Don't worry," Marley said; "That's just my brother and sister playing. I have to watch them when we're not at home."

They're very quiet," James observed, as he caught a brief glimpse of a young girl playing tag with a younger boy, about five years old. They both quickly disappeared out of sight again, "I hardly know they're there."

They've always been quiet," Marley explained, "Do you want to hear about my ghost?"

"Yes please," James confirmed as he focused back on the boy.

"Mine's a Sham," Marley explained excitedly.

"A Sham?" James asked.

"Oh sorry," Marley apologized, "I've had to make up names for all the different types of ghosts I've seen."

"There are different types?"

"Oh yes," Marley explained, "At least five. There's your Skinwalker of course and then there's my Sham, they're really nasty, they all are really, the ones that can actually hurt you."

"They can hurt you?" James asked; shocked at how matter-of-fact the boy spoke about such things. If he didn't know better, he would have put it all down to an overactive imagination.

"Oh sure, you must know that, with your Skinwalker."

James had to admit that the boy had a point. His ghost would often argue and fight with him and on more than one occasion things had gotten out of hand. He subconsciously rubbed his forehead as he remembered the time when she threw a coffee mug at him.

"Sure," he told the boy, "I know what you mean." Marley's brother and sister briefly came back into view as they quietly played on the landing.

"Anyway," Marley continued, "There's also Poltergeists; I already knew the name for those, Shades and Quiet Ones."

James quickly looked down at the children again but decided he was being paranoid. They were just kids. Quiet, but kids nevertheless. Besides, he normally couldn't see ghosts. That appeared to be a skill only Marley seemed to have.

"Poltergeists are nasty, they're always angry and throw things around, Shades and Quiet Ones are OK though, they just mind their own business."

"What's the difference?"

"I'm not sure," Marley pondered, "Because they can't talk or do things to the living. I think some can think, so I've called them Shades. I don't think the Quiet Ones think at all. I think they just do what that did when they we're alive, automatically like, like robots."

"Sounds like you've given it a lot of thought," James said, the boy's down-to-earth resilience was more than impressive. The Lad merely shrugged and continued his description.

"They stopped being so scary when I got to understand them better," he explained, "Naming them helped me understand."

"Well you're a brave lad if you ask me," James complemented, causing the boy to grin broadly. Poor kid he thought, despite what he's seen and been through, he's still only a child.

"What about your parents?" James asked, "Do they know about the ghosts?"

"Nah!" The boy replied, "My Mum and Dad don't believe in that sort of thing."

"I know what you mean," James commiserated, "My Dad didn't either. He was a scientist through and through, a doctor actually."

"Really!" Marley cried, impressed, "Are you a doctor too?"

"No," James answered laughing, "I'm an accountant. We Oswald's haven't followed in each other's footsteps for quite a few generations now. My grandfather was an actor apparently, when he wasn't a soldier."

"Really!" Marley was so impressed that he almost exploded. James held out a placating hand.

"Calm down Marley, it's not all that, I never even met him. He returned to the States before I was born, after he and my Father fell out about something."

"Your Grandfather was an American?" Marley asked, was there was no end to how impressed this boy could be about normal mundane things. Maybe it was his way of staying grounded in the real world.

"Yes Marley," he laughed, "He met my mother over here during the war. He was stationed here at the time and stayed on to raise a family."

"But he fell out with your Daddy?" Marley concluded the story with a question.

"I don't really know why, my Father never really spoke about it," James explained, "There was a dispute or something about an inheritance my Grandfather's Father left."

"What was it?" Marley asked intrigued and excited, "Money?"

"I don't think so, just books, some papers and some stage plays."

"Plays?"

"Maybe," James said thoughtfully, trying to remember, "I'm sure my Father said something about my Great Grandfather owning a theatre or something.

"Does your Father and Grandfather still not talk to each other?"

"No," James replied, "I'm afraid my Father died some years ago and his Father... Well if he were still alive I expect he would be in his 90's. But my Father told me he died in the late sixties, again before I was born. As I said, Father didn't really talk about him much."

"Oh I see," Marley said quietly, "Sorry Mister, I didn't mean to ask so many questions."

"That's OK Marley," James reassured, "It all happened a long time ago.

"Mind you," Marley suddenly announced more brightly, "That sounds just the same as what happened to my Sham."

"You haven't really told me what one of those is or what it's been doing to you," James said reproachfully and the boy went on to explain that 'Shams', as he called them, are ghosts that can make the living aware of them by making them see what they want them to see.

"Like an illusion?" James asked.

"Yes, that's right," Marley confirmed. People, normal people that is, can't usually see ghosts. I'm the only person I know who can. Even you can't see them and you know all about them."

"I know," James confirmed, "My ghost possesses other people, I see the other person and I talk to the ghost that's inside them."

"That's right, well Shams are another type of ghost who has learnt how to communicate with the living, but these ones make illusions."

"I see," James said thoughtfully, "But why do they do this do you suppose?"

"Why does your ghost haunt you?" Marley countered, giving James pause for thought. He really was a clever kid for his age.

"Well she's still angry at something I did to her when she was alive," he admitted, quickly adding, "Grown up stuff Marley," To counter any awkward questions.

"Sham's are the same," Marley explained, "My one was using me to find his Father. Like your Grandfather, he fell out with his son when they were both alive."

"I see," James said, feeling a little uneasy, "So you're saying that your Sham's son is dead as well." He looked down the stairwell again and saw Marley's brother and sister silently staring up at him from the landing below.

"Yes, he's just found out," Marley confirmed, "Now he wants to be with his Grandson instead."

James was aware of Marley standing up beside him as he continued to stare into the boy's brother and sister's dark eyes.

"I'm sorry mister," Marley apologized. "He made me help him, he hurt me so bad."

"I don't understand," James said, looking up at Marley, who was backing up the stairs with a look of terror on his face.

"Sorry Mister," he repeated as he turned and disappeared round the corner and out of sight.

James looked back down the stairwell to where Marley had so fearfully gazed and looked into the cold eyes of a young soldier dressed in American army fatigues. A man, whose appearance was not at all dissimilar to his own. Marley's brother and sister were nowhere to be seen. "Of course" James thought, they hadn't really been there had they, what parent would let a child as young as Marley's brother play so far out of sight? He could hear Marley running up the stairs crying while the soldier below, now grinning, slowly began to climb the stairs.

"Hello Grandfather," James managed to breathe as he stumbled to his feet. The soldier continued his slow assent as James too turned and fled in panic up the stairs.

The End

Copyright 2014 Chris Raven

The Indie Collaboration

& Darker Places Present:

A.L. BUTCHER

A. L. Butcher is the British author of the Light Beyond the Storm Chronicles series and several short stories in the fantasy and fantasy romance genre. She is an avid reader and creator of worlds, a poet and a dreamer. When she is grounded in the real world she likes science, natural history, history, and monkeys. Her work has been described as 'dark and gritty'

Jack Is My Name

See my blade

A gift for thee.

Whore you are

Thou shall by mine!

Thy blood will be wine

Thy life is my wish

Thy body my immortality.

I will be a god

To destroy without mercy

Thy terror shall be my ecstasy

I shall live forever

Jack is my name.

©2014 A.L. Butcher

A Blade in the Night

A Tale of Jack the Ripper

Women of the lowest class plied their pitiful trade in badly lit streets, selling their bodies for the cost of a bed for the night or a glass of Geneva liquor. This was the London of Her Majesty Queen Victoria in the declining years of the Nineteenth Century and it was dark and deadly for the poor, although the Empire spanned a quarter of the world. This was the age of steam-travel, science and ever-growing knowledge. The superstitions of the past were waning, and the queen was the moral idol of many. This was a time of literature and of discovery, of social unrest and discontent.

Victorian Britain was a country of contrasts; in the capital of, perhaps, the greatest modern Empire, there were those whose lives were filled with fear, shame and the direst poverty. Venereal disease, alcoholism and assault were commonplace and life was, unfortunately, cheap. Women and children often paid the ultimate price. The enlightened Victorians often turned their sight away from the darkness which crawled through the streets and the terror and despair which lurked around every corner for the poor.

In the autumn of 1888, things were about to get worse...much, much worse.

To this day no one knows the true identity of the Britain's most infamous serial killer, although many have put forward theories – from a Prince of the Realm, to a mad midwife, to a doctor, to a sailor, to an American, to a Jew. He took the lives of five poor women, perhaps more, in the most brutal of ways, and he became a terrible legend. Some have called him the first modern murderer, for no one knew why he killed as he did. For three months he held London in terror then he disappeared. Yet his legacy lived on for many years. Even now this man, if he was a man, fascinates students of true crime but the truth remains as elusive as the shadowy figure of Jack the Ripper...

****

1888, Whitechapel, London.

There she was, that whore he had seen before. Plying her obscene trade beneath the guttering gas lamp on the corner of Dorset Street, the woman grinned a seductive smile at a sailor. She could have been twenty or forty, the Watcher did not know. The dim streets grew ever wickeder to those of her sort spreading around her sin. Geneva liquor, that other vice of the era, and poverty aged a person far better than mere passing of the years. In the greatest Empire on Earth they blighted the land.

The sailor moved on, he'd had his pleasure with another of her kind and spent his last pennies in the tavern. Still she wasn't as much a drab as some of her sisters-in sin. The Watcher felt the lust rising, along with his hatred. Two joined as one, desire and disgust, powerful and compelling. He'd never understood why they went together but then he was a simple man, not one of the mind-doctors who had been so influential of late. Lust and hatred, pain and desire....bound so close he could experience little else when the darkness overtook him. Now, however, he watched. The hunt was almost as enthralling as the kill; the knowledge of their fear, their desperation and yet still they strutted themselves, offering a screw in the alleys and passages of the East End, and more if the customer had coin and the taste for it. Filthy strumpets. Never did he consider the terrible choices they made. Never did he consider the choice was no real choice. Their sin, he thought, was what damned them.

The whore was alone; it was a damp night, and after the recent terror God-fearing and respectable folk were behind doors. Shadow obscured the man's thin features, but his voice had the cadence of a local. He knew these streets well, he needed to. Once he'd almost been caught, but the devil's own luck had been with him that night. Left hand tightening about the hilt of the steel blade in the inside of his coat, and lips parched with the thrill and the trepidation he sauntered over, noticing her eyes on him. A look of relief flashed on her face, this customer was a safe one. He could almost see the thoughts in her head. Oh how wrong she would be!

"Fancy some company?" the red-haired woman asked him, coyly. This one was handsome, for one of her trade. So fresh, now he could see her better, so delightful. The urges pounded within him. Dark, deadly, devious, devilish. She was still a whore, a cheap street slut and so he would enjoy her all the more, he thought. One less to corrupt the working-class men, one less to bring shame on the Empire.

He smiled a thin, humorless smile, and gripped her skinny arm. The whore chatted to him about nonsense, about her fear of the Ripper, as he was called on those autumn nights by a press who had never seen the like in the' Autumn of Terror'. Fear stalked the streets in these dark nights, and its blade was sharp. Oh yes, thought the man, he had arranged that one well enough, with that tip off, the newspapers hungered for it. Hungered for the outrage, and the bloodshed. London found itself transfixed. Terrified yet fascinated.

Such fun, these games. Thirty years of experience of the low-lives of London town had honed his skills and his perceptions. The greatest city on Earth was also the deepest pit of sin.

The room she kept was meagre, but at least this one had a dwelling; Miller's Court was a slum filled with the dregs of humanity. This was much less risk than an alley, or courtyard, although of course that lessened the thrill. He could remain here, enjoy her. He had long enough until he would be missed for what he'd planned. As she went over to light a candle a soft song filled the air; a simple love song, sung by a sweet voice. That would soon be silenced. How dare she behave as though they were respectable sweet hearts! Never had he asked himself what brought a woman to a life such as this. Never had he cared. They sullied the streets, they brought shame. That was all he cared for. That and to feed the beast dwelling within.

"No light, whore. I like the dark." He almost snarled, the darkness within rising up with the disgust for this drab, with her petticoats up around her knees and her hands unlacing her bodice. Close to the door his hand felt for the key, turning it once. It would not do to be disturbed. He swiftly removed his hat, coat, and the dark trousers he wore. Making sure they would be well away from any mess he might make. Oh there would be much of that this time! A simple shirt and undergarments were easily discarded. No need for the cloak which had covered his crimes before.

Mary-Jane shrugged, it made no difference to her. Barely a cry escaped her as the client sprang forward, hand about her throat. "Filthy bitch! Spreading poison in the streets. Your kind took my brother, a shameful death, riddled with the clap. It was a whore, a filthy whore, who did for him."

Barely able to breathe Mary-Jane felt the world closing in around her. Trying to struggle free, she kicked behind her. "Bitch, don't you know who I am!" Adrenalin course through him. A sliver of moonlight shone through the cracked window from his blade as it caressed her cheek. "Now where shall I start... that face... that pretty bosom, or lower down...the place of vice itself...."

A pitiful squeak escaped her lips, now turning blue, and her eyes widened with pain and fear as the blade cut her cheek to the bone. Savoring the fear, the warm, crimson blood over his hand, Jack closed his eyes, tipping back his head. This was exquisite, this was justice!

Too weak to scream the whore was unconscious soon enough. Even in the dim light his eyes were good enough to find the black shape of the bed. He tossed her skirts into the hearth, and his blade slashed them to pieces as it would do her flesh. Soon the fire warmed his back as he worked. Thirty years on the streets, thirty years of night-work, the darkness and cold were naught to him, but given the choice he might as well enjoy the pleasure of the spitting fire, see his victim in her final moments and beyond.

Deep he drove the knife into her neck, following the line his hand had been tracing. Warm, wet she bled, not yet dead. The blade touched bone, and idly he wondered if he should take her head, leave it beneath the lamp where he had picked her up. Not even Saucy Jack dare risk that, not yet. Not yet! One bloody hand finished the unlacing of her bodice, touchingly edged with flowers, as though she was a respectable woman. Snarling he sliced them one by one and tossed them into the fire. A whore with fine garments! Not whilst his blade was sharp. First one nipple was traced, then the other. Small and round were her breasts, like those of the sweet widow of his brother; anger boiled and he sliced, he slashed and ripped until her duckies were mere piles of flesh, scattered above her head. Flesh ripped, a slick sound, the music Jack loved so much. Down went the knife, laying her open like a hog.

Alone with his blade and his victim the man chuckled. The police were so incompetent they could not see what stared them in the face. This was a man who came and went like a ghost, left his victims ripped and torn like a demon and who taunted them. The inspector had not appreciated the kidney he'd been sent. The man had lost his breakfast over that one. Jack was doing what the inspector could not seem to manage, clearing the streets of filth and vice. He served the city, and he fulfilled that service in any way he could.

The whore's guts were warm, her kidney soft and pliant. Sharp blade slipping through the arteries; a tug here, a flick there and soon her intestines were flung over her shoulder, like a scarf he'd seen her wear once. For his nightly walks showed him much, even if he was largely disregarded.

As he chewed on her liver his blade slid down to her vagina, he plunged in the blade twisting it in the soft flesh of her private parts. Contemplating how many men had entered there, been corrupted by her. As the flesh ripped beneath his shining blade he opened her uterus, ripping with the knife and tearing with his hands. He was enjoying this one. It was compensation for the third one; he had been disturbed then, had to leave her before he had finished. He looked at the bloody mass before him, muttered, "Foolish bitch, knew there was a killer around... she still plied her trade, desperate for a tumble and a bed... serves her right, filthy, dirty whore."

He was nearly done, and the zealous darkness within almost sated. Another flick of his wrist and her nose was gone, and for a final insult he leaned down and kissed what remained of her bloody, ruined face. Wiping his hands on his shirt to remove the worst of the blood and tossing his undergarments into the fire, he stoked it a couple of times then redressed. He thought of her, the woman he served. The perfect idol of womanhood and morality. If she knew how he served her she'd reward him. With a final look of satisfaction he pulled gloves from his pocket, picked up his policeman's helmet and continued on his beat, with minutes to spare.

Copyright 2014 A.L Butcher

So Many Nights, So Many Sins

Amber fire light flickered in the small grate, casting a dancing pattern on the grubby walls of the cellar-bar known as The Cavern. Wolfgang Feuerleiben turned his bright hazel eyes despondently towards it and shivered; as usual he could not seem to get warm even close as he was. His leather armchair which had once been blood-red was now a dirty brown with age. There was, as usual, an empty but polite circle around him, other patrons of the bar maintaining their customary distance.

Wolfgang beheld the majority of The Cavern's patrons with barely concealed contempt; he viewed them as naïve, somewhat sad individuals or arrogant, shallow time-wasters. He asked himself, as he did every night, why he came here? It certainly wasn't for the company, although he occasionally admitted to himself in the dark hours that he was lonely, desperately so. He refused to betray what few principles he retained and take a companion. Wolfgang knew that he of all people deserved to be alone. So many sins, over so very many years.

He had been here, on this particular night, since an hour after sunset and the usual noise of a crowded bar filled the air. Dragging his hazel-eyed gaze from the mesmerizing orange glow of the hearth fire Wolfgang glared around. Anyone who happened to catch his gaze generally looked away rapidly, and Wolfgang preferred it that way. 'Oderint, dum metuant' as Caligula had once said. He may have been an insane bastard, Wolfgang thought, but he had been a clever one, and knew how to throw a party.

His acute hearing picked up the thump-thump of the steady rain on the door and barred windows even through the hubbub of the bar. Many nights of tuning out the background noise, or picking up particular conversations in the melee which mattered had left him both cynical and able to focus on a particular sound among many. He sighed; deciding tonight was NOT a good night to be vampire.

The Cavern was the local haunt for his kind, along with various groups of misguided mortals - known as thrill-seekers. Wolfgang had a particular distain for those who thought hanging around with the 'undesirables' was cool and great for their street cred. Thus the bar had its usual assortment of regulars and hangers on. A heady mixture of blood, sweat, perfume, alcohol and power filled the air, guaranteed to intoxicate most thrill-seekers and more than a few vampires of the younger lineages.

The dark haired vampire was exceptional, even for his own kind, or 'companions-in–darkness' as they euphemistically referred to themselves. Although, as a species, vampires were incredibly curious about the affairs of others they knew little about him and Wolfgang chose to keep it that way. He was 'an eccentric' with outspoken views and odd habits. Many of the regulars thought he was dangerous, even psychotic, but were generally too polite to say within his superb hearing. Or possibly too cowardly. Wolfgang knew exactly what they thought but as it suited him, was loathed to change it. Fear was a powerful tool. The vampire rumor mill decided that those who challenged him disappeared and the rumor mill was not always wrong. He was reticent and many believed, arrogant. Recently Wolfgang had been even more reticent than usual. So many nights, so many sins.

Wolfgang twisted in his chair, slightly creasing the immaculate purple silk waistcoat which he habitually wore, with a pair of unnervingly tight leathers and a shirt of silk, usually of dark blue. At a motion from his hand, the barkeeper, Antonio, appeared with another drink - the affectionately termed 'Bloody Maria'. No one ever asked Antonio where he acquired the blood, and no one cared.

The vampire moved the chair closer still to the fire, one of his many eccentricities. Most vampires feared fire; Wolfgang found it fascinating, soft yet deadly, beautiful yet ephemeral. A knowing smile crossed his face, he knew why the Cavern maintained an open fire, and who paid for it. Not only did his love for fire border on obsession, but also it kept the other vampires away from him, which was an added bonus.

His attention seemingly fixed on the dancing flames the vampire pretended not to notice when the door opened, letting in a blast of damp winter air, laced with the smells of the night. The scent of perfume drifted in, a soft aroma which he recognized, although he could not place why. Even above the smell of a crowded bar, he could sense her, and her apprehension, which dwelt within like darkness. Her smell was soft, warm and...alive. Heart beating fast he could hear it now, beyond the rain and the chatter.

The black lace top and tight jeans she wore covered enough to hint at promise beneath, to be sensual, but providing any measure of warmth now that was another matter. She shivered and glanced towards the fire, catching the inscrutable look of the vampire basking it its glow. Rain glistened on her skin, and picked out the deep plum streaks in her raven-black hair. Wolfgang rarely gave the mortals more than a cursory glance, or if he did it was as a cat sizing up a mouse with whom it wished to play, but this woman held his attention. There was an air about her both of fear and of independence, a resolute but slightly nervous attitude. The contradictions intrigued him.

He smiled at her, a strange occurrence, as she hesitantly glanced around her, asking of him as she warmed herself to healthy pink, which made the vampire like his lips and shift in his seat.

"Do you know Frederick Warner? I am supposed to meet him here," her voice was nervous, she was out of her depth and knew it.

Wolfgang removed the pocket watch from his waistcoat and scrutinized it for a fraction too long. "He does not usually turn up until at least two o'clock, my dear... if at all. He is not renowned for his punctuality. May I have the honor of buying you a drink while you wait for him?"

He saw her slight blush and a hunger stirred, and a desire. Not to mention the urge to persuade her to dismiss the charming but totally immoral Frederick Warner. He was well aware the best thrill-seeker targets were vulnerable and alienated - the victim syndrome. Perfect for the likes of Frederick, easy prey with a promise of immortality, of never-ending fun, to be used then discarded. Wolfgang was sick of clearing up the dejected remnants of Frederick's whims; putting the poor creatures out of their misery.

Frederick and his cronies were not merely thoughtless, but more dangerous they were careless. He detested the predatory vampires who used the mortals for their own pleasure. Not because of any moral obligation, he had passed that handicap many centuries ago, but because the mortals asked awkward questions; even vampires were vulnerable, at least during the hours of daylight. At least Wolfgang admitted to himself what he was. Once, long ago he had gazed into the abyss, and now it gazed out through his own hazel eyes. So many nights, so many sins.

Antonio appeared and produced another Bloody Maria and a bottle of expensive German wine. The girl looked around again, somewhat uncertain at the place and the odd and hungry looks she was getting. "Lucie Von Marienburg... er delighted to meet you," she said, with more confidence than she felt and held out a hand.

Wolfgang, hesitated, gazing at the slim white hand with fascination, and for a fleeting moment intense hunger, before he forced the feeling away. Taking it in his own he kissed it gently, savoring the taste of Lucie's scent. A memory stirred, a memory long since considered gone.

"Wolfgang Feuerleiben, it appears my evening has just improved dramatically."

He poured the wine and watched her carefully as she sipped it, trying to ignore the craving pounding behind his temples. He hadn't felt like this about a thrill-seeker for three hundred years. It was more than just the accursed craving, it was something deeper; a feeling stirred within him, a mixture of lust, hunger and yearning, mixed with an urge to know her, claim her soul for his own. Even the hunger could be pleasurable...very pleasurable. Wolfgang felt uncomfortable, fighting the feelings surging through his body, feelings he had thought suppressed. He shifted slightly, and momentarily tempered the feeling with a large mouthful of his drink. What was it about this woman? She was merely another thrill-seeker.

She seemed out of place, not only because she was alive. Thrill-seekers often frequented the Cavern but Wolfgang sensed this one was different, somehow more ... untainted. Her eyes were like coal, but glistened in the light of the fire and she seemed small and pure in this haven of the damned.

Wolfgang knew that the sooner Frederick had an 'accident' the better. While his mind was busy planning the downfall of another, preferably slow and painfully, he made polite small talk with his companion, still fighting the unnerving attraction towards her.

As the hours passed Lucie began to yawn, they talked of art, and literature. They debated religion and science, and they laughed. Wolfgang had not laughed with someone for so long, he had forgotten the thrill. The irony amused him, of the Thrill-seeker captivating the vampire.

"I guess I have been stood up... Story of my life! I think I will head home, the wine is going to my head! I am not used to such as late. Thanks for keeping me entertained, Wolfgang."

She arose and Wolfgang smiled bitterly, knowing he would let he would let her go at the end of their encounter.

"I would not recommend walking home alone, let me accompany you, or at least pay for your taxi."

Lucie watched him, he seemed charming, if a little aloof and sad. He was attractive with his bright hazel eyes and dark hair. Besides, he was clever and made her feel as though no one else existed. Something about him called to Lucie, something fascinating.

"A taxi would be great, you can come too. For a coffee you understand," He uncurled from his spot by the fire and helped her into her coat. At this moment the door opened and the tall figure of Frederick Warner entered.

"Well... if it isn't Feuerleiben muscling in on my prey again. He dragged a thin bony finger down the girl's pale cheek. Obviously excited by ideas of the fun he would have with this one. He murmured to himself, "Well my little thrill-seeker, how I shall enjoy you!"

"She is not a thrill-seeker, leave her be... don't you ever have enough?" Wolfgang spoke as he stepped between the newcomer and the girl. "She is not interested in what you have to offer. Touch her again, and I will tell her exactly what you are, and the others too."

A couple of heads turned, partly in alarm and partly in curiosity, the conversation level dropped and a couple of nearby vampires backed slightly further away. "You wouldn't dare - too much at stake. We both know it. It is forbidden \- you know that. The Council will destroy you. The Thrill-seekers find out soon enough but by then it is too late," retorted Frederick, but his blue eyes registered apprehension. "Who do you think you are, sitting in front of that fire night after night? Passing judgment on my, our, behavior, thinking you are so far above us? I have heard the stories about you, but they don't frighten me. You think you are some bloody avenging angel, so much better than the rest of us, telling me how to live my life!" Anger brought with it bravery, or at least bravado. Unseen by the younger vampire, one or two of his companions edged away. They knew death, and this night he stood before them.

Wolfgang gazed back at his rival with a terrifying comprehension of the world mirrored in his hazel eyes, Frederick looked away, unable to meet the gaze of one who knows his own soul and the darkness it holds.

"You have no life - you are dead. I cannot take what does not exist. You are the same as I; a leech, a parasite feeding from innocence and ignorance." Wolfgang suddenly snapped, his slender frame reacting with lightning speed, throwing his rival into the wall next to the fireplace. "How many Thrill-seekers have you taken over the years - hundreds? The lucky ones die and stay that way, the others become abominations, poor damned creatures. Fated to walk in the eternal darkness, in the half-life we inhabit. Oh yes, it is fun for a few years, then the bloodlust starts..."

Wolfgang sprang towards Frederick like a cobra towards a rat, twisting his fingers into claws, twisting the claws into Frederick's hair and placing a deathly cold hand on his throat. Frederick managed nastily, although with a venom he did not really feel, "We are not all freaks like you, twisted, some welcome the gift."

"Ha! Gift! Do you ask them if they wish to die? Do you tell them they will never see a sunrise, taste food or see their families? I cannot remember what it is to see a sunrise, everything becomes grey after a hundred years or so. All the colors of the world, merely degrees of darkness. I know I once enjoyed food, wine, but I cannot remember why, now it is the unceasing craving for blood. I have read all the books I will ever want to read, heard every piece of music, I have watched history repeat itself, stood by as the mortals kill themselves in futile wars over and over, watched empires crumble and guess what, it is boring! For centuries mankind has sought eternal life - believe me it is not worth it. This monster is what we become when we find it. The dead should be buried and mourned, not hiding on the edge, living in a world between life and death to become the nightmares of myth and the horror of reality."

"Oh I have killed so many times, eventually it begins to mean nothing, no remorse, no guilt, not even any pleasure. I kill only what is already dead or will shortly become so, that is all it has become. Life means nothing, and death even less. Eternity is dull, the world moves on, yet we remain in this state forever, cursed by our passions and beset by ennui. Nothing changes, just pointless games intrigues to pass the time. We play no part in the world of mortals. We are not gods, we do not exist except in hell. Even the thrill of the blood lessens, every sense is dulled and grey. Nothing is exciting, the body aches. I am so cold, always cold. Eventually the mind begins to decay with the futility and boredom."

He spun around to the others, who were now staring with a mixture of fear, disbelief and the curiosity of the doomed. Frederick fell in a crumpled heap at his feet, too shocked to move at the outburst, blood oozing slowly from his hair. He had looked into Wolfgang's eyes and seen a terrible despair, a terrible comprehension of the future. So many nights, so many sins.

Wolfgang licked his pale lips, and snarled, "Anyone who wishes to see the sun may leave. Now!" A few Thrill-seekers fled in fear and self-preservation. The vampires stayed, transfixed by the scene, afraid to flee, afraid to fight. Suddenly their quasi-human masks had been torn away, and they saw the monster within. Someone sobbed, another pleaded and one even tried to ask the god who had long-forsaken them for forgiveness. "There is no forgiveness, fool. There is no return, no light of heaven. Just this – for eternity." Wolfgang's laugh chilled them, even the fire paled at his rage.

Lucie stared, she suddenly realized this was all true; the stories, the nightmares and the monsters. What had started as a dare, as a date had become something so much more, so much more dangerous. Yet as she glanced at Wolfgang, she remembered how he'd kissed her hand, how kind and clever he had been, how alone. Self-preservation overcame desire and she bolted, yet something deep within made her stop and creep into the shadows of one of the windows. This small, mortal woman was braver than the vampires which cowered within. So she returned, she wanted to see Wolfgang, to ease the sadness. She was afraid, but resolute.

Peeking in, with the curiosity which had first brought her here she watched, unable to draw away her gaze. The tingling apprehension, the lure of danger filled the young woman and she wanted more of it. Never had she felt so alive.

"Coward... you are no more than a freak, Feuerleiben! You are insane!!" Yelled one of the vampires, from behind a table.

Slowly Wolfgang walked to the bar, tossed leather wallet towards the barkeep, and then snatched the bottles behind the bar. Alcohol sprayed across the counter, fumes rising as spirit after spirit was spread around. Watched by the damned and doomed he smiled, stalked to the fire and thrust his hand into its crimson heart and plucked out an ember. Laughing with the same chilling sound as before he dropped the wood onto the alcohol-soaked bar and floor. Suddenly the fire encircled him, dancing before him like a beautiful slave, then ran ever-consuming across the floor. He stepped over the lake of fire, smiling slightly as he saw Antonio snatch up the money, as he had so many times before. The door closed behind him and the vampire pulled over a large, sturdy bar, wedging it in place.

As the screams echoed into the night, the vampire turned and headed towards his motorcycle.

"Take me with you," Lucie breathed, as the glow of fire tinted the wet road orange.

"You do not know what you ask, girl. Go and live your life, leave me here. Forget what you have seen."

Lucie grabbed his hand, "I know what I am saying! I am not a bloody fool. There is nothing in this city for me. You only live once, isn't that what they say? Well live then! If I am afraid I will leave. No questions, no regrets. I heard some of what you said, and maybe it doesn't have to be that way. Humans hope. It is what keeps us alive and sane. I don't believe all that is gone. It sounds like a cliché, but I feel like I have known you before. If you send me away, I shall find you. If you kill me you will be alone forever, you know that. Take a chance."

As the building burned at his back Wolfgang looked at the woman, he had not met one with a spirit such as hers for a very long time. Her scent surrounded him in the cold air, and her coal-black eyes held his and for a moment he saw salvation. He lifted her hand to his lips and said, "I do not force you to do anything, come on, we should leave, before the police appear."

They walked over to the parked motorbike, as the darkness embraced its fallen angels and the fire burned ever brighter.

Copyright 2014 A.L. BUTCHER

Moonlight

The misty moon shines

Her pale iridescence on tears tumbling from the sky,

Rain is falling like shards of glass into a broken heart,

And the wind is in mourning.

Clouds of a darkness so profound

Harbor raindrops so desolate

Even the trees are weeping,

And a sadness infinitely timeless

Echoes in the terrible silence

Bringing time itself to its knees.

©2014 A.L. Butcher

The Indie Collaboration

& Darker Places Present:

ALAN HARDY

I'm a Brit. Director of an English language school for foreign students. Married, with one daughter. Poet and novelist. Poetry pamphlets: Wasted Leaves, 1996; I Went With Her, 2007. Comic, bawdy novel GABRIELLA, and satirical, scabrous novel GOOD QUEEN BETH, both available on Amazon as Kindle eBook. Other novels, similarly disrespectful, surreal and shocking, on their way. Get ready for them.

Alan Hardy is on Goodreads & Amazon

Double

It was when the journalists sought me out and asked me if I was the Refuse Skip Murderer that the incident really came back to me.

It had happened nearly twenty years before, while I was at university. I hadn't enjoyed my time there. I'd failed my exams the first year, and had had to repeat that year. My parents had to pay for me. Or rather, my mother did. I was twenty years old, and still a big baby. Although the university was in London, the allure of the big city had meant nothing. I travelled up to London each day, often arriving late for my lectures. Then, in the afternoon, or evening, I would catch the train home. There wasn't time to get used to the place, or make more than fleeting, cursory acquaintances. I was running away from growing up, I suppose.

I remember entering the lecture-hall one time, with its massed rows of seats, and sprinkling of students amongst them, and, as I wandered down the steps to find a place, the professor (a white-haired, boring old git, although, I think, quite famous) had stopped droning on for a moment and stared at me, removing his spectacles.

"And what's your name, then?" he had asked me.

"John," I'd answered rather impudently.

I didn't say John Jenkins, even though he waited for a moment. I just said John.

He continued staring at me, and then lowered his gaze to glance half-heartedly at a sheet of paper, presumably a list of students. He sighed, readjusted his spectacles, and continued his boring lecture. Nestling on a bench, I felt I'd put one over on him. I'd mastered my awkwardness and shyness, and, for once, had been the object of the other students' interest and even admiration. Probably the one and only time.

I'd been sitting alone, as always, in the university refectory, gazing vacantly ahead, and toying with the fatty meat and bland veg adorning my plate. The guy had come up to me, and stood by me as I sat there. It was disconcerting, as well as strange. No-one normally picked me out like that. No-one really knew me.

"Mind if I sit down?"

"No problem."

He looked the typical student. We all did. My age and height. Brown hair. Nondescript clothes. Heavy-enough build. Same as me.

"Is that any good what you're eating? I might try that."

"It's shit."

"What are you studying? You don't mind me asking?"

"That's OK," I answered. "Chemistry. And you?"

"What year?"

"Well, second year, but actually repeating my first year... And you?"

"You're John Jenkins, aren't you?"

"That's right. How do you know?"

"You're quite famous. I've heard about you."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I've heard you keep yourself to yourself, don't bother much with anything, a bit of a recluse. And, the best bit, you always arrive late for lectures, and you don't give a fucking toss. That's cool, man. I admire you for it."

It was weird. I was a bit embarrassed and flattered at the same time. As he spoke, he stared at me, politely enough, but so directly. His eyes sparkled. He was probably still on the after-effects of his spliff, or whatever substance he smoked or stuffed up any available orifices. I could never stand that. Taking drugs. That was wicked. It was like interfering with the natural order of things, making you into something you weren't. I didn't agree with it. There was something shameless about such people. They were happy to expose themselves to you. Reveal their innards. Warts and all. Wanted to push themselves on to you with their foul-smelling breath and itchy flesh. Like this git was doing.

"You're a sort of hero for me," he was saying. "I really admire you."

I didn't know what to say. I felt discomfited. I stirred awkwardly in my seat. He sensed my embarrassment and began to stand up. I was grateful. I appreciated him doing that.

"Well, I'll be off. I'll see you around no doubt. Got a lecture in a few minutes. Mustn't be late.

"But aren't you going to eat? I thought you said you—"

"Already eaten, mate."

"Yeah?" I intoned, thinking what a weird bugger he was. "Well, yeah, see you around...And what's your name?"

He stood by my side staring down at me.

"John Jenkins," he said, before turning round and striding off out of the refectory. I was left with the impression of a slight smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Stupid cunt, I had thought.

And then I had forgotten all about it. Well, in the sense that it never preyed on my mind. Of course it came to me, the strangeness of it all, every now and then, but I had other things and problems to worry about as I got on with my life repeating my first year, and failing miserably again. When I failed that second time I gave up on London University. It was just a few months after the experience with my namesake, my doppelganger. I went and enrolled at my local polytechnic. Made the full retreat back home. My comfort-zone. I switched to Physics, and did quite well. Ended up becoming a teacher. To some extent, I put those two years of failure to one side, and got on with my existence. I didn't bump into him again, well, not while at uni, and not for a good many years.

The journalists came over the space of a couple of days. They knocked on my parents' door one night. It was near Christmas. I was spending the holidays there. I can always remember the first one. Rather swarthy of complexion, the result I suppose of a mixed race coupling. Nothing wrong with that. His teeth jutted out a bit. He wore glasses. Spoke quite posh, for a nigger. I'm not racist or anything, just that none of us can escape those instinctive reactions, it's a shame, but there you are, it's human nature. If I had any friends I'm sure a good number of them would be colored.

"Sorry, do you know if John Jenkins lives here?"

"I'm John Jenkins. I'm just visiting my parents. I don't actually live here."

"I don't suppose you're the John Jenkins the police are looking for, are you? I can see you're not. We just check out these things on the Electoral Register, you know, and other places, and your address, or rather your parents', popped up. Just one of those things... Ah, here's George from The Daily Mail."

He gestured with a nod in the direction of a plumpish, middle-aged man emerging from another car in the driveway.

"Hi, George, he's not the one..."

"Didn't think he would be..."

"Why are the police looking for a John Jenkins?"

"The Refuse Skip Murders. You must've heard. The police have been finding body-parts dumped in skips in south-west London. Tied up in black sacks. Female body-parts. They put out your name just a couple of hours ago. They're looking for you. Or rather, the John Jenkins who is the murderer."

That's of course when the incident from twenty years before came back to me. Not that I'd ever forgotten it totally of course. But I've already said that.

Looking back a long time later, I realized that I should have committed myself more to the university. I should have lived there on campus or in digs nearby, forced myself to make friends, you know, go to the Film Society or the Folk Music Society and bond with those weirdos singing their silly songs in their whiney voices. I should have made a go of it, and not run back to mummy every night with my dick tucked up my arse. I'd been too much of a mummy's boy. Still am, I suppose. Couldn't break that umbilical chord's hold over me. It was still attached to the insides of my head. Not that I was a virgin or anything like that. I'd had it off innumerable times. But I just couldn't establish a proper relationship with a girl, I shied away from that. I was hopeless. Couldn't get close to them. Any chance of having sex with a normal woman, if there are any, was impossible. I satisfied myself with prostitutes. They didn't count. I'd started off relatively early, still a teenager, hanging out at the local red-light district. I cruised around in my car. Mummy had given it to me when she bought a new one for herself and dad. The tarts'd come into the car and I'd drive off somewhere. They gave me blow-jobs mainly. Big, fat tarts in tiny skirts and tits hanging out of tight blouses. Whores breathing and slobbering all over me, pushing themselves on me, not scared to expose their bodies and their urges. I hated them. I hated myself. But I couldn't stop. I needed them. It was my secret.

Eventually I started to have proper relationships. First of all, with an acquaintance of my mother's. She was younger than my mum, about ten years or so older than me. I thought I was in love. We never actually had it off. I used to slobber all over her, kiss her and fondle her, and would come in my knickers, and sit by her, or stand by her, beads of sperm oozing through to my trousers and embarrassing me with that tell-tale wet patch. I would squirm around, this way and that, and keep a hand vaguely in front of it, as if I could hide it. She wore mini-skirts too. She was probably a bit of a tart. But at least she didn't make it her street-corner profession. Then there were others, eventually some who didn't know my mother. And in the end I started to have proper sex. Even lived with a couple of them. Not for long, though. But, every now and then, I was drawn back to that red-light district where I would cruise round and round, ogling the gangs of half-naked whores giggling and smoking together, or the occasional lone tart reclining languidly against a brick-wall or looking up at me as I drove slowly past. Sometimes I would stop. And get a blow-job. And feel guilty about it.

Once when I was really young, about fifteen or so, I'd followed a girl all the way to her home late at night. Maybe I did it a few times. The parents complained to my parents. I stopped doing it straightaway. That secret had been found out. A few years later I started the other one, the blow-job-with-prostitutes one. That secret had never been found out.

I killed my first prostitute when I was at university. No-one ever found out. At least, until now. It remained a secret for twenty-odd years. I just had to do it. I was told to do it. I picked her up in some squalid street. She was just a foul-smelling whore, stinking of the sweat of other men. A voice told me to do it. Squeeze the life out of her. So I did. I killed her in my digs. Then I cut her up. Did it in the bathroom. Washed away all the blood. Packed the bits and pieces of her in bags, took them out over the next few days and slung them onto skips.

No-one ever found out.

It was just after I met that student with the same name as me. Maybe he told me to do it. I'd walked straight up to him. Asked him a few questions. You should have seen the expression on his face when I told him my name as I was leaving.

Things went well for a while after uni. I had a decent job. A relationship or two. It was the drinking, I think, and the drugs that ruined everything. I ended up living in a wretched bed-sit, depressed and unable to cope. I started killing again. Same system as before. Cut them up. Deposed of them in skips. Only this time I got found out.

He came to see me a few times. He asked for help. I would turn round and there he would be. I gave him a few quid. He was dirty-looking, unshaven, the worse for wear from drink and drugs. Unable to control himself. I couldn't bear people like that. Still can't. Out of their own inadequacies, they throw themselves on the mercy of others. They are shameless and pitiful. They have no self-control. They've messed up, and expect everybody to look after them.

Then the police came. They asked me a few questions. I told them they'd got the wrong John Jenkins. I told them about the other John Jenkins, and that incident in the refectory. They went away to check out the details, or so they said. Detective Sergeant Windsor, and Detective Constable Barlow. The old-timer detective and his young sidekick. Autumn and spring. Lined weariness and fresh-faced youth. Wheezy old git and boyish-looking arse-licker. They didn't believe me. They said there wasn't another John Jenkins, and that there'd never been one. I insisted that I'd seen him over the years; that he'd come to visit me at odd moments. Sometimes I would be looking in the mirror, turn round and there he would be in the room staring at me in that strangely intense way I so hated. Y'know, as if he wanted to enter into my soul, and my body. Reach into my guts. He made me want to vomit. He respected no barriers. That space there should be between people was something he knew nothing about. His hot breath would curl about my face. They took me to doctors. They said I was bipolar schizophrenic, or something. That's why the sentence was quite lenient. I think they found a few bodies, or bits of them, scattered about that area of south-west London, littering a number of refuse skips. I told them it was the other John Jenkins. They wouldn't listen. They asked me about prostitutes, and what I thought about them. I said they were scum.

I got them to come home with me. I had sex with them, and then I throttled them. After looking at them, all naked or half-naked, and toying with them, feeling their wanton flesh while it was still warm, I cut them up, as before, and disposed of them. I spoke to that other John Jenkins about it. It excited him. Filthy whores. They had it coming. We had a laugh about it.

I was let out after eight years. Good behavior and all that. That's the British legal system for you. As if I would ever have been able to kill prostitutes while in prison. I dreamt about it enough, though. Images of sweaty, smelly old hags, and equally foul shameless young hussies I remembered fornicating with. Troubling images of violence, screaming, breathless movements and rough handling of their bodies, would come to me. The things they said I did, and which he had done. I got confused at times. But they still let me out.

I ended up in a squalid bed-sit. Days passed. Nothing much happened. Somehow I survived in a sort of daze, as if I had a perpetual bout of influenza. I never met anybody, or spoke to anybody, except for the psychiatrists they made me see. And that other John Jenkins, of course. He started to turn up. I never told those psychiatrists about it. They were useless. Often I would be looking in the mirror when I would see him.

Of course I knew, as I looked in the mirror and saw him moving his foul-smelling carcass about in the corner of the room, that he would one day try to kill me. When I wasn't expecting it, he would come at me with a knife and slit my throat.

But I would keep on my guard. I would keep checking in the mirror.

I looked into it. He wasn't there. Panic seized me. I turned round. It was OK. There was nobody in the room. I turned back to the mirror. There he was.

Detective Chief Inspector Windsor and Detective Sergeant Barlow looked down at the body.

"Poor bugger," said Barlow. "Throat cut."

"He had it coming. He should never have been let out. The world's a safer place."

"Who do you reckon did it?"

"Probably some tart he brought back. Up to his old tricks again. Only this one was too strong for him. We're all older than we were. He couldn't overpower her like he did the others. All that fatty prison grub."

Detective Sergeant Barlow grimaced. His mobile rang. He shuffled off to the window. His youthfulness was fading, his hair thinning and his pale face a little haggard-looking. He spoke in a quiet voice, almost a whisper, with the occasional grunt. Detective Chief Inspector Windsor, if he hadn't known better, would almost have suspected his sergeant was taking private romantic calls on police time. Windsor was a few weeks from retirement, wheezing and gasping the time away, still very much the wizened-faced old-timer who'd seen it all and knew all the answers.

"Mind you," Barlow said, "he always denied being the murderer, didn't he? Remember?"

"Didn't deny going with prostitutes, did he? He had some weird obsessions about—"

"Lots of blokes go with prostitutes..." Barlow said. He stopped, wilting before his boss's curious, rather amused gaze. "I mean, at some stage in their lives..."

"You dirty bugger, Detective Sergeant," said Windsor, staring at him with a cruel, knowing gleam in his eye. "Still, once you've found the love of a good woman, all that nonsense will stop..."

"Like you and Mrs Windsor, sir?"

"What?" Windsor snapped.

"Love of a good woman, sir. Like with you and Mrs Windsor?"

"Hmm..."

Windsor lowered his gaze, becoming thoughtful.

"Careful now, my boy," he continued, stirring himself, "I might be retiring soon, but I could still have you slung back on the beat..."

Barlow removed the smile from his lips by squeezing them between his thumb and fingers, pausing for a second or two as he held on tightly to them. When he let go his pursed lips slowly relaxed back into their customary shape. Windsor looked at him curiously.

"What's on your mind?"

"Well, sir, there was something I never told you all those years ago. About Jenkins."

"And what was that?"

Barlow moved away from the window, looking both excited and embarrassed, his eyes bright and his cheeks flushed.

"Remember, sir, how he always went on about there being another John Jenkins? That guy who walked up to him one day—"

"Yes, yes, Sergeant, when he was in the refectory," Windsor interrupted impatiently, "I remember...and who was supposed to have visited him now and then over the years...he would be looking in the mirror and see his reflection in the corner and then turn round and there he would be? Or wouldn't be...? The guy was a complete nutter, Sergeant."

Windsor looked quite annoyed. His time was being wasted.

"Yes, sir, I know, classic bipolar schizophrenia, as we were told by the shrinks...his mind created another person separate from himself out of his madness, made him the one responsible for his foul deeds, but, sir, later I—"

"And there was no-one of that name in his year, we checked it and—"

"But we never believed his story, we assumed it was demented rubbish, it was so obviously him what..."

"And all the evidence we found in his room, traces of blood from the victims, clothing, those disgusting photos of the bodies, that knife he'd—"

"All of which he claimed the other John Jenkins must have planted, sir, but," pleaded Barlow, holding up his hand, "please let me finish."

Windsor gave a nod, the expression on his face churlish but intrigued. He glanced down at the inert body, and the coagulating pool of blood about the victim's head, neck and shoulders.

"So, sir, we just made cursory enquiries about the possibility of there being another John Jenkins, we—"

"But there wasn't!"

"Sir, please!"

Windsor sighed, and moved over to the table, pulling up a chair.

"So, sir, Constable Manning, if you remember, checked it out, and there wasn't another John Jenkins in the university's first year students. But our John Jenkins, this poor deluded bugger lying here in front of us, was in his second year repeating his first year. It always nagged away at me, I always meant to check it out, but it seemed so obvious, like you said, sir, the evidence here, the psychiatrists' report, it didn't seem necessary..."

Windsor's expression had changed, and he stood up anxiously, scratching his left buttock.

"And did you?"

"I did, sir. I enquired at the uni. I only did it after Jenkins had been sentenced, it was just tying up loose ends..."

"And?"

The tension in the room was palpable.

"Yes, well, sir, there was another John Jenkins, studying Engineering. In his second year."

Windsor stared at his sergeant.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"It didn't seem to matter, you see, I checked out where this other John Jenkins was, and he...I know maybe I should have told you, but—"

"Barlow! Where was he?"

"In prison, sir."

"For what?"

"For rape, sir. Three offences. Fifteen years."

Barlow shifted uncomfortably on his feet as Windsor stared at him.

"It didn't seem to matter, sir, you can see that. Both locked up for the indeterminate future. They couldn't harm nobody. And it was still so obvious our John Jenkins was such a nutter that—"

"That's all true, sergeant, and, if you'd told me all this then, I'd probably have agreed, and let it go...but there's something else, isn't there?"

"Yes sir," replied Barlow, drawing up his body as if a weight had been lifted from him. "I checked with the station about the other Jenkins, and they just rang me back to say, y'know, good behavior and all that, a reformed character, he'd been released earlier than—"

"When, man?"

"Last week, sir."

The two policemen stared at each other, one surprised and not a little angry, and the other disconcerted, but also relieved to be sharing information that troubled him greatly. In sharing it with another individual, even a furious superior, it was easier to bear. It took away just a little the sense of guilt he had. He moved over to the dressing-table mirror and looked into it.

"And where is this other John Jenkins living, Sergeant?"

Barlow turned round.

"So, when did you first meet this other John Jenkins?"

"At uni. I met him one day in the refectory."

"Tell us about it," said Windsor, looking curiously at the disheveled, dirty-looking figure before him.

He glanced round at the bed-sit, bare, grimy and smelly. Very little furniture, just an unmade bed, an old telly, and an ancient-looking dressing-table with a large mirror.

"Well, I was in the refectory, and this guy walked up to me...said his name was John Jenkins. I just thought he was a stupid cunt."

"Let's get this right," said Barlow, his face puzzled and slightly flushed. "Were you already in the refectory when he came up to you? Or the other way round? You went up to him? He was already there, I mean?"

"Christ, how do you expect me to remember? Thirty fucking years ago... I think he was already there...and I sat by him, and we got talking..."

"What were you studying?" Windsor asked.

"Engineering."

"Not Chemistry?"

"I would hardly forget that, would I?"

"And then?"

"Well, that was it. We chatted a bit. Then he said his name was John Jenkins. And I left."

"Who left first?" Barlow asked.

"I did...I think...it was so long ago...I'd finished my meal, and he was still eating, so I left."

"But you said he was already there," Barlow said, his voice rather embarrassingly whiney. "How come you finished your meal first? And are you sure you also ate a meal?"

"No, that's right. Yeah, I didn't have a meal. I'd just been sitting there with a beer when he turned up."

"But that contradicts what you just said!" Barlow almost shouted.

"I can't fucking remember! It was a lifetime ago! How do you expect—"

"Now," interrupted Winsor with a firm, authoritative voice, "tell me truthfully...which John Jenkins are you?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

And of course they never would be able to find out. No surviving parents or relatives. No traceable ex-girlfriends. Of course they had DNA and finger-prints, that sort of thing, they knew which John Jenkins had been in which prison, and which one was dead, and which one had been banged up for rape and which one for murder. But which one had really killed those prostitutes, and which one had been sitting in the refectory when the other one had approached him...well, that they would never know. And which one had visited the other one through the years, and then, maybe, killed him...well, that they would never know either.

Now that the two pigs have left, the old git and his younger sidekick, I laugh out loud. I laugh out loud enough, and long enough, I hope, for them to hear as they carry their loathsome carcasses down the filthy stairs. If I could have pissed on them, I would have.

I stop, and listen. I can no longer hear their footsteps. I'd love to run out to the stairs, lean over the banisters and gob on them as they walk out of the door of this shit-house I live in. I turn and move over to sit in front of the dressing-table mirror. I stare into it. I grin at myself. My eyes sparkle. I shift in my seat. I spin round. There is nobody in the room. I resume my former position, staring into the mirror. Again my attention is caught by a blur in the top left-hand corner. I look round once more. Nothing.

I'll have to keep on my toes. Be careful. That other John Jenkins one day, when I'm not looking, might try to sneak up on me and slit my throat.

I stare into the mirror. There he is. But there's no chance of him ever slitting my throat, is there?

Is there? I feel scared. I want to turn round, but can't. If I do, what will the John Jenkins in front of me staring me in the face do? But, if I don't turn round, what will the John Jenkins who might be in the room behind me do?

I open the drawer of the dressing-table, and fumble for the knife.

Copyright 2014 Alan Hardy

The Indie Collaboration

& Darker Places Present:

ADAM BIGDEN

Adam Bigden is a freelance writer who seeks to bring thoughtful stories to the world. He is currently writing variously themed material with The Indie Collaboration.

Where?

Jacob awoke to the sound of birds outside his window, as he usually did in the morning. Jacob would lie back and keep his eyes closed for as long as possible, just to imagine his surroundings as a hell of a lot nicer than they would be once he opened his eyes. The grey of the council block would assault his sight and bring him kicking and screaming into the world he hated so much.

As Jacob had grown up he would try to escape to the green in the country at every opportunity possible, his parents barely able to prevent him from running away to the fields and forests that were only an hour away on the train.

This morning he could smell the CO2 in the air, he could almost feel the thick air penetrating the lining of his lungs and leaving a black residue in their wake. The air in Peckham was so dirty that he could blow his nose, and it would come out black, just the way it did after a good night out on the town.

He lay there, waiting for the other sounds to overtake that of the birdsong, and had a strange feeling that he had been there awhile. He must have woken earlier than usual.

Minutes passed and a shiver ran down his spine, he had not heard anything other than the birds singing for what must have been 10 minutes. Where was the traffic? Where was the raucous call of the Market trader down the road? The beeping of the Pelican crossing?

All these things were those that greeted him in the first minutes of waking, reminding him that he was in a hell hole, but none had come yet.

His imagination started to run ahead of him, thinking "if only it is real and I can have fresh air and I can escape the prison of my upbringing, and the care of my Mother."

Jacobs Mother, Irene, had not set foot outside her front door in the last 30 years. A rare disease had inflamed her spinal cord and rendered it useless, and this became a great source of embarrassment for her, what with the wheelchair, incontinence and colostomy bag. Jacob could understand this, and would never desert her to the social services as long as she lived.

He did love his mother; he just couldn't afford to get them both out of there.

Jacob had worked as a data entry clerk in an insurance company for the better part of 3 years. He was still a temp, but this just gave him greater flexibility than he would have otherwise been granted. The people there didn't speak to him unless it was to give him more proposal forms or detail updates to process. Yeah, what a great job!? But he could live with it! It paid for his beer anyway.

Jacob was just trying to pluck up the courage to open his eyes and accept reality, when he heard the noise of empty milk bottles rattling. That noise evoked an old memory somewhere within him, and he kept his eyes closed as he sought through his mind to track down the elusive moment.

It was when he was 12 years old that the milkman had asked him if he wanted any Puff. Of course, he'd asked how much. The price had been good and would be delivered to the door. What else could you ask for?

Jacobs's milkman, Stan, was the kind of wide-waisted, greasy guy you'd meet in any down market pub. He had brown trousers with tears and worn out patches over the knees. His fingernails were a consistent yellow throughout the summer that Jacob had done "business" with him. The nicotine combining with something unpleasant, to coat the top and the underside of the brittle nails.

Jacob had seen them close up, right next to his face, when Stan had thought it was him that had "grassed" to the police about his illicit little side line. Stan had been arrested, charged on 2 accounts of supplying drugs, and then sacked from his job as a milkman.

Jacob had had to do some pretty quick talking to save himself from casualty that night. Fortunately he had made it through, and he had helped Stan to find the real big mouth.

A 50-something from down the road had been to blame, a Mr. Harrison, a short northern man with crossed eyes, fat legs and a Derbyshire accent. No one knows why he had grassed him up; Stan never took the time to ask the guy why, while he was stabbing him. Besides, logic would dictate he wouldn't have been able to reply anyway, not with a butterfly knife in his left lung.

Jacob had seen everything, and at 13 by then, he didn't think it cool at all. He was prepared for a slanging match, not a murder. He did squeal on Stan in the end. He couldn't take the guilt of informing Stan of who to hit. He had been so naïve, but not again, not ever, he would discipline himself. Of course, that would be after the next joint, just one more you know. One for the road and all that.

Jacob could hear the birdsong once again as his senses drifted back to the present. The squawking faint but there all the same.

Copyright 2014 Adam Bigden

The Indie Collaboration

& Darker Places Present:

DANI J CAILE

Dani J Caile is a teacher and proofreader currently residing in Hungary. After a lifetime of reading clones and a decade of proofreading coffee table books, he has written 4 fantasy satire books, 'Man by a tree', 'The Bethlehem Fiasco', 'The Rage of Atlantis' and 'Manna-X', all based on his own little neo-plantonic universe. He is currently waiting for his 5th, 'How to build a castle in seven easy steps', to be published by Three Fates Press in 2015. Dani also has a number of free eBooks at Smashwords.com, including 'TDX2' and three collections of flash fiction based on The Iron Writer Challenge. When not writing, dabbling in Shakespeare, teaching English, proofreading, washing up, hoovering, and driving all over the place, he is busy with his loving and long-suffering family.

Blog: http://danijcaile.blogspot.hu/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jedlica

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaniJCaile

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dani-J-Caile/e/B00CDX0HSM

Smashwords (free books): https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/2766

A Day in the life of a Zombie

Dead. Dead today, dead yesterday and dead tomorrow. Not easy being a zombie. Okay, it's pretty easy, just move around and look for some warmies without losing your head. Literally. At this moment, me and the guys were hanging around the Distribution Centre, same as always. Couldn't feel anything, not even the tarmac under my feet or the gooey stream of blood trickling down the side of my face. The promise of food kept us coming day after day. Without any warning, I fell to the floor. Damn Achilles heel!

"Ouch! That hurt!" It didn't. Nothing did anymore.

"Whatever." The 'guy with the big feet' who always stood next to me shuddered. His whole body moved in rhythm with his resonating laugh. I picked up a piece of wood broken from some long-gone window frame and shoved it into his shin. He stopped his laughter and stared at his new appendage.

"Look!" Another guy pointed towards the opening main doors of the Centre. I watched from street level, sideways. Three fast warmies with weapons ran out, shooting this way and that, moving up the street away from the river. Their bullets sprayed across the crowd, hitting some of the guys and girls waiting for their daily snack. The 'guy with the big feet' got a bullet in his forehead, the force knocking him down next to me.

"Better view down here, eh?"

The guy didn't reply. Seeing the danger pass, I got back up and looked around. The street was full of the fallen. I wasn't one of them- that was a plus. Maybe. I didn't know.

"Hello? Anyone?" No one. I started to walk slowly back to my place by the river wondering when I'd get my next meal.

"Morning," Another soloist appeared.

"Morning," Not much small talk, who needs it? This guy had only one hand, and a hole in his face the size of a golf ball. "Got any warm stuff?"

"No," And that was it, off he went, down the street, shuffling along. He didn't look much of a fighter with that one hand, but I wasn't chancing it. However, he did look well past his best-before date. Note: somewhere between the Centre and the river, I lost a finger. Must look for it later.

Standing by the river, I picked up my trusty spade which I'd leaned against the bridge foundations and held it up above my head. Standing, waiting. Waiting. More waiting. Zombies do a lot of that.

Many hours later, some scurrying small bits of black fur nibbled at my feet and I let them have it. Rat meat for lunch again.

"You! Hello! Any for me?" The 'guy who always sat at the river' turned towards the noise I was making.

"Yeah, 'course." I picked up the two least squashed and carried them over to him. Sitting down together, we devoured the rats, fur and all. He never ate the tails.

"Heard the latest?" This guy always heard something from someone.

"No," Then again, maybe not. A rat bone was stuck in my teeth. It wasn't doing any harm.

"Warmies in the old pub next to the market," he mumbled.

"The old pub?" I wasn't from here, I'd walked from somewhere else. Couldn't remember where.

"Yeah, the one with the Hummer sitting outside," He threw a rat's tail into the river and watched the fish fight for it. I remembered seeing a Hummer driving around recently. Whenever recently was. Zombie time is screwed up.

"Over the bridge?"

"Over the bridge. I don't go over the bridge."

"Then what do you do?" I asked. He sat and stared at the river in reply.

Sometime later, I got up and walked over the bridge. There was as much nothing on this side as there was on the other. I spotted some groups moving in one direction, they could smell the warmies. I followed them.

"Hey! Where's the old pub?" One girl from a group close by stopped and turned what was left of her head.

"Where the Hummer is." She slumped back to her group who disappeared round the corner.

"Thanks."

Look for a Hummer. One of my feet dragged, as I roamed the streets searching for the vehicle. It didn't take long to find, everyone was going one way. And there were sounds of shooting. Poking my head around the next corner, I saw the Hummer and shots from a building. The old pub. I fell over.

"Ouch! Stop doing that!" The 'guy with the big feet' was back again, the hole in his head, nor hadn't the wood in his leg stopped him from following me. He ripped out the wood and stuck it in my side. Zombie revenge. Couldn't feel a thing. Might come in handy later.

"Warmies over there!"

The guy's attention diverted to the crowd outside the old pub and he hobbled over. I got up and raced to the old pub at a steady 3 miles per hour. I'd caught up with him by the time he'd got there.

"Me first!"

I pushed my way past him and a few others to face a warmie brandishing an axe. It made a few swings with the weapon and I was pushed forward by the crowd, forcing it to drop the heavy thing in surprise. I grabbed the warmie by its arm, only to hear the sound of a shotgun and watch my arm fall to the floor, still squirming. The warmies disappeared into the old pub, and I fell to the floor with the others pushing me down. I heard a few gunshots, breaking of furniture and then nothing. The group came walking back out over me some time later, empty-handed. The warmies had left, with the promise of food gone with them.

It was dark when I bothered to get up. With one arm missing, I limped back over the bridge. As I moved over to the 'guy who always sat at the river', I stepped on my lost finger and squashed it.

"Damn," I picked up my spade with my remaining arm and waited.

"Get one for me, will ya?" Nibbles at my feet brought my spade into action.

Copyright 2014 Dani J Caile

Payback

He owed me money. That's why I was there, and from the looks of it, most of the mourners hitting on his close relatives also wanted money due. It didn't take them long to break up the ceremony, pushing those they thought responsible aside and demanding their share of any available. I left them to it, he owed so much to so many. One less vulture, one less wolf.

I first met him on a cold, damp morning when trying to get to work. The van wouldn't start so I got out the old tractor, tied it up to the front to tow and shouted out for Todd to get out of bed and come help. The sounds of a ratty motorbike drowned me out and a short hairy bearded black leather guy stopped beside the cab and took off his helmet.

"Is he in?"

"Yeah, and still in bed!"

"Oh, right, I'll get him up, then."

No word or sign of help, nothing. He hung his helmet on the handlebar and rode up the track to the house. That was Barry, mean with a knife and never blew his nose. Ever. I arrived late for work that day, almost got the boot.

"So, what's your thing, eh?" Barry sprinkled some dope over the tobacco in the paper. He'd been there all day in the comfy living room, drinking and toking with Todd. I had come back to a smoke-filled home and a ton of washing up. I made myself a tea and sat down before the cleanup.

"What? Thing? I'm in the band."

"Really?" He had a wicked laugh. "Never would've guessed you for the music kind. What'ya play?" He licked and rolled up the paper, making sure I saw the tattoo on his tongue. Todd was sound asleep, resting in his favorite chair.

"Eh, Todd, Todd! Lightweight. So, what'ya play?"

"Bass."

He almost fell off the chair with laughter but held onto his joint, lighting it with a beat-up Zippo.

"You any good?"

"I'm in the band."

"That don't mean a thing. I play bass. Maybe we can jam later."

"Sure."

Two bass players jamming together? Like two growling dogs fighting for territory.

Washing up needed to be done.

You in the kitchen?" He shouted through the house.

"Yeah!"

"Make me a cuppa, will ya? Three sugs!"

That day did come, about a week later. Barry was half cut and could hardly hold his bass while in a sitting position. His way of jamming was to listen to some music, try to catch the bass line and then turn up the amp. Nothing ever got off, he couldn't play for shit.

"Ah, show me something, hell, you're the 'pro', you're in the band," he barked, sucking on the joint way too long. I spun off a little riff, fast, furious and deep but he wasn't impressed.

"That's nothing! Look, see."

He tried to imitate my playing, but ended up banging the strings any which way he could.

"See! Did you feel that? Did ya?" Giggling, he passed over the joint with only the roach left.

After a few weeks, I couldn't find some of my best albums, they had mysteriously disappeared, until I found them stashed away in Barry's flat, hidden under some dirty clothes and rotting rubbish.

"Thought you wouldn't mind, me borrowing those," he said when he realized I'd seen them. "There's some good music there."

I grabbed a handful, putting them by the door, ready to take with me when I left. Of course, by the time that happened, I was too stoned to remember my own name, let alone some poxy pieces of vinyl.

Barry did have his connections, though, and sometimes they came in handy, while other times they did not. For example, the place had been dry for a few weeks, we were all getting desperate, even to the point of becoming clear headed.

"I'm all out. Do you know where I can score, Barry?"

"Sure," he smiled. "I know someone. Give me some money and I'll go get some for ya."

I reluctantly handed over the last of my weekly dosh and went to see another acquaintance, Pete, while I waited. It was at least five hours later when Barry appeared again, drunk. The group greeted him with open arms as he'd brought some blow and booze, but no sign of any dope or recognition that I was in the room. Barry had taken my money and that was that. Without wanting to make a scene, I took more than my share of the blow, seeing as it was technically mine.

"What ya doing?" He screamed when he'd realized what I'd done. I stared at him, waiting for a confession, which didn't come. I was the fool, he was not the cheat.

However, there did come a time when Barry was desperate. He surprised us all by holding down a job for more than a month and I had to cash his checks in every week. He was worried, scared. Then we found out that he'd borrowed money from some local shark who threatened to bust his kneecaps if he didn't pay up.

"I need five big ones or they're gonna do me, buddy. I really need your help! What am I gonna do?"

What could I do? Watch a fellow human lose his knees? Who was going to push his wheelchair? I scrapped together the money from my bank account and watched him hand it over with nothing more than a brush down. Barry was so grateful he went on a one-man drinking binge for three months.

In one translucent moment in that period, late at night with the music blaring and the neighbors complaining, Barry let something slip, possibly hoping later that I hadn't hear him over the noise.

"Ya know, there's wolves and there's sheep, an' them sheep were meant for shearing."

He laughed, clinked my bottle with his and falling into a stupor only a few moments after.

Months turned to years, and the money never appeared, although Barry's knees were as healthy as they ever were. I stayed around him, sometimes going on social outings, just to keep tabs, making sure he wasn't going anywhere, or if he got lucky, that I was there to cop the lot. Unfortunately, he usually skinned me for a donkey or a pony every now and then, and sometimes I even became the scapegoat for his little scams. On a few occasions my kneecaps were in danger.

But now, all that was forgotten, if not forgiven. Barry was dead. His name would always be remembered as the guy you'd never mess with, the guy you could rely on to back you up, the guy who'd turn into a wild hurricane as soon as trouble hit town. Barry the wolf.

No one was here now, a soft rain kept the blue skies away as the wake of vultures moved to the relatives' residence, hoping for some payout or payback. Only the local gravedigger stood between me and the newly dug soil.

"Was this the guy who rode his bike into the back of a tractor?" Asked the old guy.

"Front. Yes, it was."

"Such a bad way to go. Heard the tractor had no lights. Did they catch the driver?"

"Nope."

He owed me money.

©Copyright 2014 Dani Caile

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Thanks for reading.

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Tales From Darker Places Was Edited by Donny Swords
