

Something in the Shadows

# An Anthology of Horror Stories

## Presented by

## The Creative Evil Female Mind and Other Evil Geniuses

### Featured Author

### D. K. Mason

### Along with

### Amber C. Carlyle

### Cathy Pace Matthews

### Gary Jefferies

### J. K. Kyser

### Mary Dunaway

### Patricia Knight

### S. J. Lucas

### Sitarra LullaDIEs Sefton

# Something in the Shadows

### An Anthology of Horror Stories

Copyright © 2016 Cathy Pace Matthews

No part of this document or related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronically, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the written permission of the publisher, or author for their individual work. Each author contributing keeps the copyrights to their work and have given their permission for their stories to be included in this collection.

### Dedication

To a very special group of people, The Creative Evil Female Mind and Other Evil Geniuses. This is a group of misfits and crazies that came together to support, cajole, encourage, and sometimes brow beat one another in order to help them achieve their best. This book is one of the results of all the craziness that goes on among this wonderful, fantastic, and awesome group of people. You couldn't have a greater group of people standing at your side. I for one thank the powers that be for each and every one of them. Just don't be too quick to let them stand behind you. They might be holding a real knife, gun, or wrench in their hand.

## Shadow

Expect cold shivers down your spine,

While nocturnal creatures howl and whine.

What's that noise that creaks and groans?

Upon the wind that whistles and moans.

Beware the midnight hooting owl,

He calls to the undead, rotten and foul.

Come, dear reader and enjoy the chills.

Our authors inspire through ghostly thrills.

Your ravenous hunger for blood and rage,

Will be assuaged on every page.

Be warned, dear reader that no-one follows

Your journey through this book of Shadows.

### By S. J. Lucas

Table of Contents

Introduction Cathy Pace Matthews

Pig Headed D. K. Mason

A Dish to Die For S. J. Lucas

Panic Patricia Knight

Convert Amber C. Carlyle

The Room That Swallowed People Gary Jefferies

Big Dog J. A. Kyser

Hiding Cathy Pace Matthews

An Absent Child Gary Jefferies

Question to Kill Sitarra 'LullaDIEs' Sefton

One Woman's Dream Mary Dunaway

Carpe Librum S. J. Lucas

The Back Door Cathy Pace Matthews

The Well J. A. Kyser

Someone in the Shadows Patricia Knight

Ghost Walk Gary Jefferies

Bargains Amber C. Carlyle

Covered Mirrors S. J. Lucas

The Inheritance Cathy Pace Matthews

The Tempestuous Teen J. A. Kyser

Consumables Sitarra 'LullaDIEs' Sefton

The Chosen J. A. Kyser

Doll Craft S. J. Lucas

Tom Awoke J. A. Kyser

Sisters Cathy Pace Matthews

Hers Patricia Knight

The God Strain Gary Jefferies

The God Strain II Gary Jefferies

The Hunted Cathy Pace Matthews

About the Authors

Acknowledge

Introduction

I was given the task of introducing our little collection. What better way than to give you a little sample of what you might find in our little tome of stories meant to make your blood run cold and give you nightmares?

***

Her First Story

She sat silently at her computer trying to get the words to come. It was only a few days away till the deadline for the short story she had been working on and she had been trying for hours to write. She wasn't having much luck this night however.

She really wasn't a writer but she had decided to try her hand at writing a short story for this book that someone was putting together which would be featuring the work of new writers. She didn't know if she had what it would take to make it into the book but she was making an effort.

At first the words had come easily but toward the end of the story she had hit a brick wall as it were. The story was supposed to be a horror thriller type thing but the only horror she had known was her own day to day life that had come from the man she had been married to for ten years. The only thriller type experience she had ever encountered was when he had disappeared. Maybe that was the answer to her problem. Maybe she should be writing something along those lines. Of course she couldn't, wouldn't talk about that but she could write about something similar.

She got up and went to get her coat out of the closet. Reaching up to the shelf over where her coat had hung she retrieved the hand gun there. Smiling she slipped the gun into her coat pocket. She got away with it once, at least so far, she saw no reason why she couldn't get away with it again. She thought this time it would be a stranger so there really was no reason what so ever why it should come back on her as she walked out the door into the cold wet night.

***

You will find something that will scare you in the pages of this collection of hair raising tales. The subject matter for this compilation of stories is a collection that cover a broad range of subject matter and come from around the globe. Within the cover of this book you'll find ghostly figures, a library with a deep dark secret, several wickedly evil humans of all ages, a creature or two of the night you don't want to meet in a dark alley, actually I don't think you want to meet any of the antagonist in these stories in a dark alley or anywhere else for that matter. Whatever the monster or monsters were that have frightened you in the past I promise you'll find ones far worse in our little collection. Not a whole lot scares me. I grew up watching and reading horror yet putting together this amazing collection of stories even I had trouble turning off the lights when it was time for bed. I may never turn the lights off again.

Of course none of the authors who were kind enough to submit their stories for this book would ever, could ever commit any heinous crime for the sake of a story. There is just no way, they couldn't, wouldn't, I mean I don't think...

I hope you enjoy Something in the Shadows. A compilation of short stories by a group of amazing story tellers with wickedly evil minds.

I believe I'll forgo that little dinner engagement with the group that's coming up.

Enjoy and sleep well.

Cathy Pace Matthews

# PIG HEADED

### D.K. Mason

### Pig Headed

"This place is so cool!" Samuel acted like a kid in a candy store as he ran back and forth between displays. His petite wife Mare rolled her eyes.

"This place is creepy! See if you can find a phone, obviously there is no one around."

"I seriously doubt if a phone will work in here! The place is abandoned. We may have to start walking." Lara held on tight to her husband's arm as she glanced around the dusty shop. The place sold all things pig related, of course because it was a PIG FARM and Market.

"Look, Barbeque sauce from the 70's!" Samuel laughed as Mare elbowed him in the side.

"The storm is coming up fast. We need to find a phone, find help or start walking." Lara dug her nails into her husband's arm as they passed a display of gruesome pig mask. Comet laughed at her reaction and yelled for Samuel who raced right over grabbing a mask.

"Wow! Honey look at this!" Samuel put on a mask and turned to his wife. He started dancing around.

"Take that off RIGHT NOW! Look the rain has started. We need to leave."

Lara watched the scene in disgust. Samuel dancing, her own husband laughing so hard he had to lean against a display to hold himself up, and as usual Samuels snobby wife acting exactly like what she was, a snob. The woman had complained since they left the city, making the entire trip miserable. Maybe if she hadn't been whining in Samuels's ear he wouldn't have missed the turn then ran the van into a ditch trying to turn around.

Mare stormed off toward the front of the shop as he continued to laugh and joke with Comet. Lara sighed. The road trip was supposed to be fun. They planned to take their time and have an adventure while getting to know each other better. Comet and Samuel were old high school buddies who lost touch until finding each other on social media. They discovered they were both on vacation and each of them were planning a road trip. Why not go together?

Mare whirled around when Samuel came up from behind still wearing the damn pig mask. She was watching the storm through a dirty window as the yard flooded and turned to mud. All she could think about were her expensive snow white sneakers.

"I told you to take off that MASK!" Mare yelled as she reached to snatch the mask off of him herself. She would give the man an earful once they were out of this mess. The large butcher knife sliced into the arm she lifted. Mare stumbled backwards as white hot pain shot through her body. Her arm fell to the floor with a thud. Before Mare could scream she was repeatedly stabbed. As she fell to the floor the Pig masked figure bent to slice her neck.

"Here Piggy, Piggy!" The voice cooing over her already dead body was not her husband Samuel.

"Where is Mare?" Lara glanced around after hearing a noise toward the front of the store. It was getting dark as the store was without electricity. The storm was roaring outside shaking the building, but the noise Lara heard was inside, with them.

"She is mad at me! The woman doesn't know how to relax and have fun." Samuel spoke through the pig mask as Comet continued to laugh at his antics. He remembered that wild dance from high school.

"Well I have to agree with her this time. We shouldn't be playing around in here." Lara decided to walk toward the front to find Mare. Maybe she could talk to Mare and calm her down.

"Man I can't get the mask off!" Samuel pulled at the mask sending Comet into more stomach busting laughter. He hadn't realized how much he missed his old friend. Nonstop laughter with their high school friends declaring they would be famous comedians one day.

"You better take that thing off and go find your wife. I have a feeling you will be sleeping on the couch for a long time."

"Comet, help me! This thing is on too tight; it hurts when I pull to get it off."

"Man, come on! Remove the mask and stop playing around. My wife is probably mad at me now too." Comet's grin slowly disappeared as he watched Samuel struggle with the mask. He reached out to help him then recoiled in horror.

The pig mask was warm to the touch, and instead of plastic, the mask felt like SKIN. A high pitched scream interrupted them before Samuel or Comet could react, the scream was repeated as Lara stumbled toward them. A Pig Masked figure holding a bloody knife was right on her heels. She kept screaming as she raced past the two men who swiftly recovered and ran along with her.

Two couples huddled in the farm house watching the storm increase in fury. They split up from the other couples when the van crashed into the ditch and they found themselves stranded. They decided it might be faster if some of them went into the store and the rest searched the house for a phone or help. The place was obviously deserted.

The worn out sign was emblazoned with the words FLETCHERS PIG FARM AND MARKET. The four couples read the sign as they continued up the long driveway toward the buildings in the distance. Angry gray clouds bellowed overhead threatening to release the fierce storm the weather report on the radio warned them about. Surely there would be someone here. Once they reached the yard devoid of vegetation leaving bare dirt it became obvious the farm was abandoned.

"Look! There they are, but why are they running and screaming like damn fools?" West pointed and the others crowded to the window to see.

"Oh my God someone is chasing them! What is that?" His wife Verna gasped.

West grabbed his pistol as he ran to the front door. Lara reached the front porch first nearly knocking West down, Comet was next. As soon as he ran past West fired his gun at the two Pig masked figures, one of them fell tumbling backward down the steps. The second one stopped, turned and ran back into the storm where he vanished.

"You shot Samuel!" Lara screamed.

"Samuel?" West stared at her in disbelief.

"He was wearing a mask, just like that lunatic that killed Mare!"

"My sister is dead?" Granger cried out. His sister Mare invited him and his wife at the last moment. They were renting an eight passenger van, the trip sounded like fun. Now she was dead?

"Everyone make certain the house is locked tight so that thing can't get in here!" Comet yelled as he ran to a window checking the lock.

"I need to check on Samuel!" Granger raced outside where Samuel was struggling to get up, still wearing the pig mask. He helped him to his feet and brought him inside.

"Everything is locked tight." Comet returned and gave Samuel a funny look.

Granger helped Samuel to a sofa where he laid down. He was still wearing the mask and Cornett remembered what happened when they tried to remove the mask.

"The bullet missed him. Luckily for Sammy boy here you are a poor shot." Granger settled him down then reached to remove the mask. His hand encountered what felt like skin. As Granger started to back away he noticed the bloody knife.

"Here Piggy, Piggy." The pig masked figure was swift as it leaped to his feet and attacked Granger with the knife.

Finishing his slaughter he turned to the group cowering at the front door watching in disbelief. Chomping on a limb he advanced on them. Comet managed to get the door open but before the group could escape they discovered more Pig Masked figures waiting with open jaws.

"BARBEQUE!!" One of them yelled.

FOUR YEARS LATER

"There were no survivors?" Tameka gasped as the speaker finished the story of FLETCHERS PIG FARM AND MARKET.

The group sat on the grass. The sky was blue with sparse clouds; the autumn sun provided welcome warmth. The professor glanced toward the buildings. This was his first year taking a group of his best student to explore paranormal at the abandoned pig farm. The story telling came first before a group meeting to discuss rules and regulations. They would be camping out but were not allowed to sleep overnight in any of the buildings.

"There was one survivor which may surprise you. Samuel didn't die. The pig mask somehow melded to his skin. Extensive surgery repaired the damage to his face but his mind was never again the same. No one knows where poor Sammy is, perhaps he stalks the grounds of the pig farm..." The Professors voice trailed off as his dark eyes danced with merriment and mischief. There was nervous laughter as he continued.

"Whew! I am glad to get away from there. Blah blah blah! All talk and no action. I have been dying to get in this place for years." Ben entered the unlocked farm house. His girlfriend clung to his arm looking around in amazement. The place seemed perfectly normal.

"Separating from the group may not have been a good idea." She whispered.

"It will be fine. First off, we find a bed. You know like in those horrible slasher movies?" Ben turned to kiss her.

She giggled as she kissed him back. "You are such a bad boy."

Ben swept her into his arms and headed up the staircase to where he hoped they could find a bed in the still furnished farmhouse.

Back at the campsite the other students who had made the trip wanted to know more about the legends of the old pig farm.

"So tell us the original story? What really happened out here?"

The professor nodded his graying head. "I can only tell you of the rumors. Sit back and relax."

***

Fletchers Brothers Barbecue had stayed ahead of the competition for years. There was a bit of something in the meat the competitors couldn't seem to put their finger on no matter how hard they tried. As the brothers aged, they worried over their operation.

The Fletcher Pig Farm with a Market later added was handed down from generation to generation, from the looks of things it seemed the family business would end with them. Until one day they noticed an advertisement in a newspaper for a Fletchers Funeral Home.

Heath Fletcher was aware that somewhere in his distant lineage he was related to the owners of Fletchers Barbeque. He thought it was a hoot if the story was true. He himself was a mortician, the handler of human flesh. He agreed to visit the men who insisted he call them Uncle.

The brothers couldn't have been more alike; although they weren't twins it was difficult to tell them apart. Age and hard work had bowed their once strong backs. Each man still had a head full of thick curly hair although iron gray replaced the jet black from their youth.

Bear was the younger of the two men as well as the weakest. An assortment of illness confined Bear to a wheelchair but he could still get around quite well. His older brother Lowell had him beat in age by a gap of two years. He took Heath on a tour of the farm with Bear trailing behind in his wheel chair until they climbed onto a golf cart.

The Fletcher Pig Farm was located in an isolated area a few miles from a tiny town. Due to age and health the brothers just couldn't keep up with the amount of work the once thriving business created. Heath made the decision to help them if they agreed to add him to their will.

"I can run the barbeque line but I do have my own business, the mortuary." He reminded the two elderly men as they toured the farm.

Of course he could relocate his business but Heath was aware he couldn't run both. He had no intention of giving up his own successful company. The Pig Farm would be discontinued as soon as his Uncles were dead and buried; Heath hoped to make that happen sooner rather than later.

"So you are not going to tell me the secret ingredient?" He helped his uncles climb from the golf cart they rode around in to oversee operations. Bear was returned to his wheelchair and Heath helped wheel him to the farm house.

Bear cackled. "Everything will be revealed in our wills, just you be patient."

Early the next morning Heath was standing in the window looking toward the pig pens when he noticed a commotion. To his knowledge the brothers rarely left the farm, allowing one lone farm hand to handle and feed the pigs. The market was already shut down. Heath had briefly met Jasper. The farm hand was a new hire, but Heath knew the sound of his voice. The voice was now yelling for help.

Heath raced from the farmhouse, past the startled weaker of the two uncles seated in his wheelchair. Heath was stunned to see Lowell, the older uncle, fighting the young farm hand, holding on tight as he persisted in trying to plunge a needle into him.

"I warned you not to snoop around here. You are trying to steal our secrets and sell em!" The older man rasped as he refused to let go of Jasper.

"I wasn't! I swear I wasn't! I won't tell what I seen!" Jasper pleaded for his life.

Heath rushed over to try to stop his uncle, who suddenly turned on him. Jasper was growing weaker having already been stuck with the deadly looking needle. Heath tried to side step as his Uncle jabbed the needle into his neck. Desperate to save himself Heath shoved the old man with full force, watching in dismay as Lowell fell backwards into the pig pen.

The Pigs immediately surrounded his flaying body which squirmed trying to escape. The pigs began to devour Lowell as they squealed with delight. It wasn't just the sight of his Uncle being eaten alive by the vicious hungry pigs that shocked a horrified Heath. There were also mutilated half chewed bodies among the pigs.

The screams of his weaker uncle distracted Heath from the gruesome scene. His uncle was racing toward him in his motorized wheel chair, crying out for his brother. A sharp pain in Heath's neck reminded him he had been stuck by the needle.

Shortly after the investigation ended and his surviving uncle was placed into a nursing home specializing in mental disorders Heath visited him. He was desperate to reverse the effects of the needle which was turning him into a pig. His uncle laughed. Heath persisted until his uncle sighed, at last ready to give up his dark secret.

"Lowell started killing our competitors whom we caught snooping around the farm. We disposed of the bodies by feeding them to the pigs. Heath this has been our secret for decades. Our pigs love the taste of human flesh. When there weren't any nosy folks coming around my brother went hunting for pig feed. He injected to paralyze them and we tossed the body into the pig pen. Until the day Lowell got the needles mixed up and injected one of them with a needle meant for a pig. Heath we watched the man turn into a pig. There was more meat seeing as how our pig supply was dwindling. Good luck finding a cure."

Heath worked closely with Jasper searching for a cure but over time their hope dimmed as months and then years swept by. In the beginning it was only their heads that changed. Without warning at any time the two men could find themselves PIG HEADED.

The side effect neither could hold back was their taste for human flesh. Eating the flesh helped them remain in human form for longer periods of time. The hunts were exhausting. Heath realized opening the mortuary might make it easier to find the bodies they needed. However opening a mortuary in the area wasn't an easy task, so the hunt continued.

The professor finished his story and stared at each student in turn, suddenly realizing two were missing. Someone admitted the couple was seen entering the house. The professor expected this and ordered the remaining students to stay put. Dusk was falling and they still had to set up camp.

He entered the house and stood in a downstairs room listening to the sounds of giggling from upstairs. A rule was broken and the couple would be expelled from his paranormal course. If anything happened to them the college was responsible. He couldn't allow his career to be put at risk.

The Professor was half way up the stair case when he spotted the figure coming down the stairs, wearing a pig mask. Sighing with frustration he ordered the smart ass to remove the mask at once and join the others.

The figure stopped and just stood there frustrating him more. This student was his biggest skeptic along with his girlfriend; he wondered why they even enrolled in the paranormal class. He raised his voice demanding the mask be removed.

"I will take it off for you!" He was running up the stairs when he spotted Ben along with his girlfriend standing on the landing.

They watched in horror as a large butcher knife was produced and their professor was stabbed to death. The pig masked figure then started up the stair case toward them.

***

ONE YEAR LATER

"No one survived?" The newspaper reporter inquired as she glanced around at the farm house of Fletchers Pig Farm.

Shale was a city gal with a bright future ahead of her. Snatching this assignment would boost her career. There would be a media frenzy early the next morning as demolition began on the old Fletcher Pig Farm. Determined to get an inside scoop Shale tracked down Samuel Watkins who offered to give her a tour of the farm, as well as his account of the massacre he survived so long ago.

Plastic surgery repaired his face but from what she heard Samuel was a little touched in the head after all he went through. She certainly couldn't tell it as he recounted his experience with accuracy as well as the story of the paranormal college class who died out here a year ago. Samuel had a wicked sense of humor and an infectious laugh. Shale was thoroughly enjoying his company even though she was working her job.

"So I put on the pig mask and began to dance around like this." Samuel showed her the dance and Shale roared with laughter. "Now do you want me to show you how I stabbed them all? Including Heath Fletcher and the farm hand Jasper? They were the ones who murdered my wife."

Shale turned to face him, shocked by his words spoken in a low hiss. His facial expression had changed; Samuel looked remarkably like a pig, but without the mask. And he was holding a large butcher knife.

"Here Piggy Piggy." Samuel cooed as he raised the knife, bringing it down before the pretty reporter could utter a scream.

A Dish to Die For

### S.J Lucas

### A Dish to Die For

The mouthwatering aroma of garlic, saffron and fresh mixed herbs simmering in salted butter exploded through the yellow kitchen. Sunflowers and ornamental pottery pumpkins with cheery grins and red cheeks adorned the welcoming room. A state-of-the art fridge and cooker stood opposite each other, with a white marble island counter dividing the space between the two appliances. Sunday morning sunlight filtered through the filmy lace curtains that covered the window above the double sink on the left, and highlighted the glass fronted cabinets and silver microwave on the right. Kari stood in her cute pajamas, working magic in the pan.

"Hmm-mhmmm, babe; you sure know how to work them pots "n" pans, girl," Freya said, and hugged Kari around the waist.

"Ah hah, so you only love me for my mad cooking skills then," Kari said, her smile warm and wide.

Freya smacked Kari on the ass, and chuckled. "Oh no, you cheeky little lamb, I love you for way more than just that, and you know it!"

"Pour us some coffee, please," Kari said as she folded whipped eggs and cream into the sizzling pan. _This is how a Sunday morning should be. I'm so glad this amazing woman saved me from a life of hell._

Freya noticed the dark expression on Kari's face and felt her heart squeeze in pain. "Don't think of him, Kari. Paul is out of your life and he will never hurt you again."

"I know. Let's not talk about him, how's about that coffee, eh?"

Freya hugged Kari once more then obliged her lover's request with two steaming cups of strong, black coffee.

"Tis the nectar of the gods," Freya said, savoring the taste. She walked over to the radio near the fridge and tuned in to their favorite station. Music blared through the speakers and Freya, placing her cup down on the island counter, grabbed Kari, spun her around, and danced vigorously to the beat. Kari threw back her head and laughed, clasping her hands – spatula and all- around Freya's neck. The cloud of unhappiness from moments before evaporated like steam from a boiling pot.

"You know I love you, right?" Freya asked, staring into Kari's hazel eyes.

"I know, I love you too," said Kari, matching Freya's grey stare. "However, you're not going to love those eggs very much if they burn, now are you?"

"I suppose not, little lamb. It'd be an awful tragedy to have a famous Kari Dish spoil and burn," said Freya.

"Haha, it's a tragedy indeed!" Kari said, kissing Freya full on the mouth before turning back to the smoking pan.

"Ah, here's the news." Freya settled down on a bar stool with her lukewarm coffee.

The voice of the well-known news caster boomed through the kitchen _. 'In today's top headlines, a truck has overturned on the Franco Nelson Highway near the Spaghetti Junction, spilling its cargo across all three lanes. Police and traffic controllers are there trying to clear the mess and redirect traffic, so please consider an alternative route on your way to the airport this morning. In other news, the police are baffled by the disappearances of several local restaurant owners, and are currently investigating a possible human trafficking ring. There have been no successful leads to date. And finally, a fifteen year old teen from Mackelrose High has discovered an innovative method of serving watermelons this summer! Please stay tuned for more after the break, in the meantime its over to Carol for the weather.'_

"I hope the police find leads concerning those restaurant owners." Kari dished the perfectly cooked eggs on to two plates while Freya added the bacon, creamed mushrooms, smoked pink salmon and hollandaise sides.

"Me too, it's such terrible news. It makes me so worried for you though, lamb. Do you have to go in to the restaurant today? You can always play hooky and stay home with moi," Freya said, wiggling her eyebrows.

"Oh my word, Freya, you're incorrigible," Kari said, feeling a little tempted to do just that! "However, I'll be fine. It's the end of the month so Carlos and I have to do stock take and go over the new orders for the month, plus we need to balance the books. I'll be back as soon as I can, then you can have me all to yourself for the rest of the day."

Freya choked on her eggs in mock indignation and began to cough.

Kari threw down her fork, and gave a choking Freya a solid pat on the back. Kari offered her lover the almost empty coffee cup so she could wash down the offending food. "You're supposed to eat the eggs, you numpty! Not choke on them!"

Freya gulped the black liquid and pretended to pout. "What else am I supposed to do when my sexy girlfriend is to spend most of the day holed up with her equally sexy Head Chef?"

"In case you haven't noticed, babe, Carlos seems to have all the wrong bits and pieces to catch my wicked eye!" Kari said, placing her empty plate and used cutlery in the sink. "I'm off to shower, try not to die while I'm gone."

"I'll try," said Freya, and blew Kari a kiss. "Are you sure I can't convince you to stay?"

"Babe, I would eat eyeballs just to be home with you today, but alas, work waits. I promise to be as quick as that red- and -yellow superhero." Kari kissed Freya on the cheek.

"Okay, go, before I change my mind!'

Kari pranced from the kitchen, all long legs and tumbling midnight hair, her infectious laughter bubbling after her all the way up the stairs; the ghosts of the unhappy memories long forgotten. _Oh Freya, if only you knew how much I love you._

***

Carlos cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. He glanced up to where Kari sat opposite and wondered not for the first time why this woman was immune to his charms. Usually, women considered him a tall drink of sexy on any given day, and none could resist his exotic accent that made the ladies beg him to say their names over again. The magic he created with food and drink was pure sin on the tongue, and decadence in the mouth, and was part and parcel of his easy seduction of the fairer sex. Try as he might, though, Kari remained oblivious, and it frustrated him.

Kari sat at the desk in the main kitchen. Receipts, ledgers, order books and stock take sheets were scattered around her and Carlos like fallen leaves from autumn trees. She looked up at him and offered a tight smile, which he returned. He wore black chef pants with his pristine white chef's jacket unbuttoned to reveal a muscle-hugging vest beneath. The tap of Kari's finger on the calculator and a nearby pot boiling on the gas stove where the only sounds that broke the silence.

"Are you boiling chicken stock in that pot over there?" She asked.

"No, it's a surprise. I will give you a taste later." Carlos ignored the look of irritation that flitted across Kari's face. She did not meet his gaze, but kept her head down and concentrated on the books in front of her.

Carlos stared at Kari, committing each curve, contour and line to memory. He could not deny the attraction he had for this woman, everything from her onyx hair, to her hazel eyes and skin the color of fresh cream, called to him. He bit the back of his pencil trying to keep from moaning in exquisite torture _. Dio! This woman will be my undoing. I cannot wait to find out what she tastes like._

Kari felt Carlos's eyes on her and looked up. There was no mistaking the hunger that lurked beneath his sinful gaze. "Is everything alright?" _Stop looking at me like that, dammit!_

"Yes, cara mia, I feel perhaps a little... hungry." His voice was a lazy drawl.

"I'm almost done here, then we can call it a day, what do you say?" Kari said trying to invoke as much false bravado into her voice as she could muster. Danger, deception and darkness seemed to ooze from Carlos's very pores. _Something has changed, things don't feel right. Time to go now, girl, time to get away from him!_

"Oh, no hurry, mia bella, we have plenty time, no?"

"Actually, I have someone waiting for me so I think we can wrap this up and continue tomorrow," she said. _God, I need to get out of this kitchen right now, something is seriously off!_

A storm had blown up during the afternoon, and rain bubbled and swirled in the gutters. An angry flash of lightning lit the restaurant kitchen in blinding white. The fluorescents flickered ominously. Kari's hair stood on end at the ravenous look on Carlos's sneering face. Gone was the handsome chef; in his place was something... evil.

_Oh, no, no, what the hell is this?_ I need to go! I need to go now! Kari swallowed. She stacked up the books in a teetering pile then grabbed her handbag and car keys from the counter. Her heart drummed out a fanfare of fear within her breast, and her breath came in short, terrified pants as her chest constricted.

"I really must go now," Kari stammered to an empty kitchen.

Carlos had disappeared.

The unmistakable bass of thunder boomed overhead. Kari stood rooted to the spot, her trembling legs refusing to move. She scanned the kitchen but there was no sign of Carlos. The pot boiled on the stove at the far end of the kitchen, its lid rattling like an energetic disco dancer. Kari made out a shadowy figure standing in the corner near the pot and the horror of the moment galvanized her into action.

Kari sobbed. Her body was a livewire of mind numbing fear _. Move, Kari, move damn you, go, go, go!_ Adrenaline spiked through her veins and she bolted for the back door. _Key, I need the damn key, oh god, which key is it?_ Her hands shook as she battled with the lock on the exit door; she dropped her keys, scooped them up, and froze.

Carlos's cold laughter echoed through the kitchen. His voice was barely a whisper. "Where are you going, mia bella?"

Kari whimpered. Tears streaked in mascaraed rivers down her pale cheeks. Her head whipped from side to side, glancing over her shoulders. _Where are you, you bastard? Where are you?_

Kari gripped her handbag tight against her chest and dashed towards the opposite end of the kitchen. She was almost at the double doors that lead into the restaurant when Carlos intercepted her and grabbed her around the waist. He lifted her clean off her feet. Kari screamed, dropped her bag and keys in the scuffle. _Fight, Kari, fight him!_ But it was no use; the man's grip was demonic.

Carlos dragged her over to the nearby bar chair and tied her arms and legs with rope.

"No need to struggle, bella. I only want to have a little dinner with you, is all," he said. Carlos pulled on the ropes, they were tight. "Hmm, just look at you, all trussed up like a Sunday turkey ready for carving..."

Kari squeezed her eyes shut and wailed. _Freya, Freya I love you. My Freya, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I should have stayed with you..._

Carlos brandished a silver bowl from beneath the hot pass counter. He lifted the polished dome to reveal an unidentifiable meat concoction. The odor of fried onions, red peppers, leeks and celery made Kari's stomach turn. Carlos shook up a bottle of extra virgin olive oil and drizzled some over the strange dish.

It smelled like veal.

"Here, take a bite and tell me what you think," he said, scooping up a forkful of the grey meat and feeding it to her.

She chewed and swallowed. It did not taste like veal and she forced herself to control an involuntary dry heave from her stomach. "It's fabulous, Carlos. Now let me go, please." _Please, please let me go!_

"Let you go, cara mia? How can I let you go if you haven't tasted the dessert yet?"

"If I taste your dessert, will you let me go?" Kari stammered. Fresh tears coursed down her face.

"Ha, it is funny you should ask me this, bella. It is the same thing all the others asked too, before I fed them my dessert." He chuckled. The sound of his slow laugh drove icy needles through Kari's palpitating heart.

The force of his words hit her like a punch to the gut at the same time cold realization trickled into her foggy brain _. What does he mean that the others asked too? Oh god, please, please let me get out of here alive! Was it Carlos who kidnapped and killed those other restaurant owners? Is he responsible for their disappearances and deaths? Oh god, am I next?_

A crack of thunder shook the window panes and rattled the utensil holders on the stainless steel counters. The lights flickered for split second before all went dark. Kari screamed then sobbed. 'Please let me go,' she begged over again.

Carlos appeared holding a candle. He shielded the flame with a cupped hand, and placed it on the counter. The low light enhanced his unholy features while he scooped the contents of the boiling pot into an ornamental bowl with a showman's flourish.

"You must try my dessert now, Kari." It was a demand.

"Please, will you let me go if I do?" She begged, pleaded. _Freya, darling Freya, forgive me. I love you._

"None of the other owners liked my dessert; they all found it...rather distasteful," he said. The shadow of a smile toyed with the edge of his mouth. He stalked towards his bound prey, bowl and spoon wielded like sword and shield in battle.

"But if I try it, and if I like it, will you let me go?" She continued to plead even though she knew it was fruitless.

"We shall see cara mia. Now open wide."

Kari waited for Carlos to insert the spoon in to her mouth, but faltered when she saw the bobbing contents. Orbs floated in the broth, turning slowly to reveal optic nerves on one side, and colored irises on the other.

"Why are you screaming, Kari? You don't like my dish? How could you know if you never try it?" Carlos yelled, shoving the spoon into her mouth.

Kari spluttered and spat at Carlos. The last thing she saw before he hit her unconscious was the look of pure malice on his livid face, an eyeball of one of the missing restaurant owners sliding down his cheek in a jellified mess.

Carlos placed the bowl and spoon on the counter, grabbed a carving knife and fork from the utensil holder and licked his lips.

"Now, Kari bella," he whispered hungrily, unable to contain the lascivious pleasure from his voice, "let's find out how you taste!"

# Panic

### Patricia Knight

### Panic

He sat across the table from his mother. She was listening to the television, "Did you hear that?"

"No ma'am."

"Another child has gone missing. They have got to catch this lunatic. Today is Tuesday, you have ball practice after school right?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Who is bringing you home?"

He smiled, "Ronnie said he'd bring me back. We're gonna play my new Xbox game."

She nodded. "Okay. I'll call home around five. What do you want for dinner?"

"I'll just heat up some of last night's lasagna."

She nodded again, "Okay dear. Have a good day. Stay safe. Are you taking the bus this morning?"

"No ma'am, Ronnie is picking me up. He's trying for a summer job and wants me to help him prepare for the interview."

"Are you thinking of getting one too?"

"If you don't mind I might try to get one."

She tousled his blond hair, "If you want to." She looked down at her watch, "I have to go. Have a good day at school and good luck at practice. Love you. Be safe."

He kissed her cheek, "Love you too. See you this evening."

"Authorities are asking for any information you may have on Stuart Holden. Please contact the local police department." The news anchor said in a calm voice.

He just smiled, turned off the television, and went back to his breakfast.

Later that day Stuart's body was found.

Five days after that another child went missing, a six-year-old girl named Maria Rodriguez. Her body was found that afternoon. She had suffered the same horrific fate as Stuart and the other three children that had gone missing and were found dead.

His mother sat at the table, shocked. "Michael, this is getting out of hand. Why haven't the police found this sick person yet?" She looked at her son.

He looked up at the television, "I don't know Mother. She was such a pretty little girl."

"I know. Why would anyone want to hurt a child?"

He shook his head, "I don't know. That person needs help."

"I hope they catch them soon and lock them away forever."

He nodded.

She took a deep breath, "I know it's not cool, but I'm taking you and picking you up today."

He smiled, "its fine, and I like the trips with you."

She smiled, "I'm so glad you turned out the way you did." She gave him a tight hug and a kiss on the top of his head.

He gave her an awkward one armed hug. His other arm was stuck between them.

She tousled his hair again, "Finish your breakfast. I don't want you to be late."

"Yes ma'am."

The next child went missing two days later. The eight-year-old was found the next morning. His mangled body was found in the restroom in the old wooden gym of the elementary school. The janitor got there early to start redoing the wooden floors before summer break began.

Three days later the seventh child went missing, another girl. She was in junior high, but had the mental age of a toddler. She had never known a stranger and loved everyone she met.

Police began patrolling the schools, the parking lots, and even walking through the schools. In one more week school would be out and it would be harder to protect them. They came down hard on anyone who had ever been in trouble for anything, sexual assault, child molestation, drugs, even those who had more than one ticket for drunk driving became subject to investigation.

There was no lack of finger prints at the scenes, but they matched none in the system. The FBI had been called in, but they could not match the prints. Interpol agreed and ran the prints through their system, still there were no matches.

Theresa Matthews was a single mother. She worked long hours at a hospital an hour away. Her ex-husband was completely out of the picture. Her family was loving and supportive and her and her son had a wonderful relationship. Today was the last day of school and she had a surprise for her son, she had taken a temporary job with an agency. Instead of sweltering in south Louisiana all summer, they were going to be sweltering in Hawaii. She wanted her son safe from this sick child murderer.

She had her bags packed.

She walked into his room and looked around. His ribbons and trophies from the last two years in high school baseball topped his book shelves. Signed balls and gloves filled the shelves where books normally would have gone. On the wall behind the trophies, carefully framed, were jerseys signed by his favorite professional players. She was thrilled that she had been able to get them for him.

Sitting next to the air purifier was a small metal box. It was from a card game he played when he was younger. She picked it up and sat on his bed. He stopped playing the game right before she divorced her husband. Sometimes she thought he quit playing the game because of that. Michael was nine at the time. She had protected him from his father's darker nature, but one night she couldn't protect him enough.

Michael Sr. got fired from his job. He had been drunk and a co-worker got put in the hospital. He got mad and drank some more. By the time he got home he couldn't walk straight, see straight, or speak clearly.

She sent him to his room and told him to lock the door, something she never said before.

Mike began to yell at her, blaming her for everything. Quickly yelling wasn't enough. Yelling turned into pushing. Pushing turned in to hitting.

Theresa tried to run.

That had been a mistake. Mike reached out and grabbed a hand full of her long blonde hair and stopped her in mid run.

The pain took her breath away. The punch to her stomach took the rest from her. She reached for anything to fight back.

He stopped yelling, concentrating his energy on beating her. When she laid still he stood up and began to kick her. The moment she moved and began to cough he was on her again. This time his fists worked on her face. She felt her nose break. She felt the teeth dislodge from her jaw. A blow to the side of her head had been merciful, she was unconscious.

She woke up to find police and paramedics in her house.

Her son, her angel, had called the police. Her husband was placed on a stretcher and put into another ambulance. She was flown to a trauma hospital where she underwent several surgeries. Her husband had to undergo surgery as well. He had sustained a blow to the head, but the real damage had come to his ribs. Michael Jr admitted to coming down the stairs and seeing his father beating his unconscious mother. The child was terrified and grabbed a heavy iron frying pan and hit his father in the head. Seeing the large man twitch he began to hit his father's body. It was after that the boy called the police.

His grandmother held him tightly in her arms, thankful her grandson had saved her daughter and probably himself.

Theresa looked down at the box. It was no wonder her son stopped playing the innocent card game. When the divorce was final Michael Jr took on the role of being the man of the house. He had just turned ten.

She opened the box, expecting to see small trinkets from his previously innocent youth.

She pulled out a plastic yellow hair tie. Then a cheap Superman ring. A rainbow colored ponytail holder. All together there were seven strange items in the box. She put them back and closed the box. As she stood up her foot bumped another box, this one under the bed. She pulled it out and opened it up. Inside she found newspaper clippings about the missing children. A familiar purple alcohol bag caught her attention. It was Michael Sr.'s favorite brand of alcohol. She picked it up and noticed something was inside the bag.

Theresa opened the bag and poured the contents out on the bed and wanted to scream. A bag full of little containers and a knife had come out of the bag. She barely noticed the knife. It was the contents of the small square food containers that horrified her. In each container there was an eye. Some blue. Most were brown.

Each of the missing children had their eyes cut out.

She cried for weeks afterwards. She had called the police. They searched the boy's room. Michael came home and sat quietly on the couch. He calmly admitted to killing the children. When asked why he did it, he answered, "To keep them from growing up."

Return to Top

# The Room That Swallows People

### Gary Jefferies

### The Room That Swallowed People

"What are you doing in my house?"

The woman's voice stirred Amelie Hamilton from a dream about a dog she had grown up with as a child.

A nostalgic reminisce of long walks, in fields, where it was always sunny and cool at the same time. One of those memories where hay-fever didn't exist, it was sunny, but not sweltering, and being an adult was a long way off.

"Excuse me," she managed while trying to shake off a mind groggy with sleep.

"I said, what are you doing in my house?"

Amelie sat up. How strange, not the sort of thing a burglar would confront you with, she thought. It was dark and her alarm clock revealed it was 12.01 a.m., barely into the next day.

"This happens to be my house thank you very much, so what are you doing in it?" She was speaking to an empty room which, was even more curious.

Just to make sure, she switched on the bedside lamp. The darkness retreated leaving peripheral shadows. Definitely no-one in the room. She blinked and got out of bed. Slowly, she turned around, just to be sure.

"Is there anybody there?" Rather clichéd, she thought, just knock once for yes, twice for no.

There was no response, although her light went out plunging the room into darkness.

She cursed and muttered under her breath, "Another damn power cut."

From under her door there was a flickering orange glow and voices.

The woman spoke again, but sounded far more distressed.

"What are you doing in my house?"

Amelie paused. She wasn't talking to her at all, and it appeared that more than one person was downstairs. Creeping back to the bedside table she picked up her mobile phone. No signal.

Dammit, she thought.

Returning to the door, she opened it and moved towards the top of the stairs to peek over the bannister rail. Things looked different. Her modernized Victorian semi-detached house was no longer modernized, and the wall that made it a semi was missing. In fact the stairs she was at the top of were certainly not hers. They were central for a start, and far more in keeping with the original Victorian manse later split in two.

No wonder the voices carried.

The under the door glow had come from gas lighting that ran at intervals down the landing. Panic was setting in. She stepped backwards into her room, and then came out again; my house, not my house. Her palms were getting clammy and she was trying to control her breathing.

Long slow breaths, stay calm this must be a very bad dream. She returned to the top of the stairs, but held back out of sight.

"But I love you Elisabeth." A man's voice, desperate and pleading.

She heard a chair move. The woman, Elisabeth was more urgent.

"Jonathan, you can't be seen here...my husband will be home soon."

The man spoke again, his voice cracked. Amelie imagined he was crying.

"But you are carrying my child."

Elisabeth grew angry and insistent.

"Never say that." The words were spat out with vehemence. "Get out now, and never come back."

Amelie felt there was a degree of horror in the tone.

"Or I shall call for the Peelers."

There was a thump as something hit the table; Jonathan's fist perhaps, she thought.

"Very well," he said, "but I shall not be held accountable for my actions."

A door slammed and Amelie could hear crying. She returned to her room and sat on the bed shaking. This time the door was left slightly ajar so she could see if things outside reverted to normal. They did not. Settling back, she felt her own baby move; third trimester, she was agitated too. Her own husband was at a conference in Holland presenting a paper on something to do with particle physics. She was never quite sure what that meant at the best of times. CERN was just a word meaning big vacuum tube thing, where other things you couldn't see flew round in circles crashing into other invisible things that were even smaller. Did her head in, although a scatty memory and interrupted sleep wasn't helping. It made dealing with things you could see tricky at the best of times.

Downstairs she heard a different male voice.

"My apologies for being so late Torrie, the meeting ran over slightly."

"Not to worry Alfred, these things happen."

She lies well thought Amelie.

There was the sound of breaking glass and a scream. Amelie moved back to her vantage point, this time daring to look over the bannister. What she saw made her heart beat a shade bit faster.

Flames were expanding from drapes that were drawn across two windows to the left of the front door opposite the base of the staircase. Glass was strewn across a tiled mosaic floor and the curtains flapped in a breeze from outside fanning the flames which were now spreading.

Alfred was moving toward the door, but staggered backwards onto the floor as he opened it; his head covered in blood. Jonathan stepped through, a hammer in his left hand; it was stained red and dripping leaving a trail of bloodied drops.

Elisabeth's mouth opened and closed as she stumbled against a table that offered temporary support. Her face was white.

She spoke in a terrified whisper, "What the hell are you doing Jonathan?" He just glared back, eyes filled with rage and staggering with the gait of a mad man riddled with liquor wielding a raging slur.

"If I cannot have you then no-one will."

He moved toward the table; Elisabeth backed off. The flames were moving down the room and behind her. She turned too fast and tripped, crashing her head against the corner of the table before landing on the mosaic. A pool of red liquid grew from her hair.

Jonathan dropped the hammer and fled.

Amelie could feel the heat as her own escape route was cut off. Thick smoke was driving up the stairs forcing her to retreat back into the room. The window was jammed shut and smoke began crawling underneath the door. In desperation she smashed the glass. The ground was a long way off and 30 weeks pregnant was not making things easier. She began to cough and the smoke made the decision. Her world went black as she slumped to the floor.

***

Across the road, and most definitely in the present, Allan and Joseph Carmichael were surfing the web looking out at the old Hamilton place, as they had done for the five years since Amelie Hamilton had gone missing. Both sides of the semi-detached large Victorian house were boarded up and had been for three years. James Hamilton had originally bought them both, hoping to renovate the house back to its original state prior to the fire in 1875.

Being paranormal hobbyists they were renting this particular house because the local population believed the Victorian place opposite was either haunted or possessed. Urban myth had it logged as a place people went into and sometimes never came out again. They said it woke up every five years and wanted feeding. To date the brothers had found numerous accounts of missing persons that either owned or visited the place. Evidence was less numerous; the police had been unable to trace any of the absent inhabitants and had even held James Hamilton in custody whilst exploring the possibility he may have disposed of his wife.

Eventually they let him go, whereupon he was admitted to a psychiatric ward for treatment. The Carmichael's had managed to interview him but retrieved very little apart from a series of notes from a disturbed mind.

"The place is possessed by the devil."

"There is a room that swallows people."

"It's alive with ghosts of the dead."

A year later, James gave up and had the place boarded. Some say he boarded it from the inside and was never seen again. Certainly, after the interview, Allan had been unable to locate him and since the police had received no missing person's reports little help came from that direction.

Allan was currently staring at the house opposite. The more he looked the more unsettled he became.

"Who's watching whom?" He was talking to himself.

His brother startled him from the reverie.

"Al, look at this," Joseph stared into the screen displaying an archive for local news relating to the fire, "Amelie Hamilton was pregnant."

Local businessman Jonathan Webster was, today, accused of setting a fire with intent to incapacitate and murder Albert and Elisabeth Beechworth and their unborn child. In addition, the remains of an unknown female, also with child, were discovered in an upstairs room. Being of unsound mind the accused was spared the hangman's noose and admitted to an asylum for the remainder of his days. When inquisition as to motive was applied by the prosecution the only words uttered by Mr. Webster were "Get out of my house."

# Convert

### Amber C. Carlyle

### Convert

Kenneth knew not how he arrived. One minute he had been standing along his fellows, in a bedroom at an inn, where a young woman had fallen victim to a terrible crime. The next, he had been ripped from one place and deposited in another - a place full of shadows with only flickering light at the end of a hall to guide his path. Everything that he sensed about the place was cold, distant, and foreign. Even the presence of his God, the inner warmth that soothed him always, that too seemed to fade into the distance, leaving him hollow.

Having no place to go but forward, he trudged along the path, a hand against the cool stone of the walls. Whatever had brought him here, he had to be cautious. There could be any multitude of things that trespassed in this realm, which would feast upon him as quickly as kill him. But, if he stayed, he would be trapped, and he had to find a way back. If only to find a way back to his God's side, to feel that steady, ever-lasting embrace.

The light grew brighter as he neared it, but there was no heat of flames - just the cold, unfamiliarity of this place. He inched closer to the edge of the light, doing what he could to remain unseen. Pressing himself along the wall, he peered around the corner, catching a glimpse of a woman sitting in a black throne, bronze skin shining in torchlight. There was a perfection in the way she sat, as if she were a statue, and Kenneth felt his breath catch slightly. The woman must have heard him, as she turned her head, and glinting amber eyes met his brown. The flames in the room bloomed to a heightened intensity, blinding him.

"Bind the trespasser."

The voice was serene, cool. It must have been hers. He wanted to speak out, to claim he was not here to trespass when hands descended upon him. The robes and clothing were ripped from his body, razor sharp fingers digging into his flesh with no regard. A strong hand snaked through his hair, yanking his head back as he was gagged. Whatever was doing the bidding was almost giddy, giggling with an impish delight.

The flames subsided as quickly as they rose, and the room was cast in darkness - only a minute bit of light that left a silhouette of the lady on the throne. "Enough. Bring him forward."

Kenneth was shoved toward the voice, stumbling a few feet before falling to his knees.

"Kiss ground!"

"Yes, yes, kiss ground!"

A gaggle of similar shrill voices began echoing one another. Each one got more excited from the next, and the sounds soon became piercing to his ears.

"Silence, my daughters."

A simpering overcame the darkness, as they did as bid.

"Show me what our guest can do."

A joyous squeal overtook the chamber, and Kenneth soon felt himself descended upon by the many hands. They pushed him onto his back, and pulled his arms and legs until he was spread eagled across the ground - ground far warmer than the black stone implied. His skin was pulled taut, stretching until it felt as if it might rip. Muscles strained, ached - limbs twisting as the hands grasped tighter. Fingers, then nails, bit into his flesh, as if hot needles were burning through the tender skin.

A scream finally broke from his throat when the now talon sharp fingers ripped a haunch of meat straight from his gut, chortling in glee as it claimed its prize. A second hand grasped at his thigh, pulling and digging, the pain searing straight to the bone. Tears welled in his eyes as he felt a second scream building, and he begged for his god to come to him. The last thing he recalled before darkness consumed was a voice, commanding.

It was uncertain how much time passed. The only thing Kenneth knew was he was trapped. He had begun to count days as the times between being awake and not. There was no passage of sun, no passage of stars or moon - just the cool black stone ceilings and walls. Sometimes, it was the small cell that he would wake in. Other times, he would be dragged back to her, where he would be feasted upon until he lost consciousness. Yet, always when he awoke, his body was whole, with just a red welt of a scar and the hollow ache of pain to remind him of the torture.

The creatures would vary their torture when they paraded him before her – she who would simply sit and watch, rarely a word uttered from her lips. At first, his screams delighted them, whipping them into ecstasy; however, with each passing session, they began to grow annoyed and angry if he succumbed to the pain. Their faces, which were a pale shade of her likeness, would twist in grotesque fashion as they shrieked in fury \- savagery fueling their movements until the pain overtook his brain with the name of his god on his lips.

When he would awaken after those moments, his body would be marred with fresh scars, some of which he could not recall how he received. Perhaps his inability to withstand the torment offended the creatures? Why would his God forsake him to their mercy though? Where had that warmth gone? Why was it that she was only the one present, and only her rare word could end his suffering? Not that she often did, her presence was like a statue's, silently watching yet never intervening – letting the events play out as destined. Yet, there was an odd comfort to her presence. Knowing that the creatures listened to her, perhaps she would grant him mercy once?

The sessions, eventually grew infrequent, and even when the women would drag him from his cell, often, she would not be present - as if she no longer had an interest in him. Without her presence, there was no chance of mercy, as every passing day made his own God a more fleeting memory. Every day, he remembered less of what it was like to feel embraced by something eternal. A seed grew in his stomach, gnawing at him with doubt, as a lash raked across his back. The crack of the whip resounded in the room, rather than the exultant shrieks of the creatures, but he found himself biting back the scream, half hoping that maybe if he controlled himself, she might come. It was as if her presence lingered just on the edge of his mind, taunting him. That day, he uttered no name before pain and exhaustion overcame him.

Kenneth soon began to hate his cell. It was a cold, barren place that offered little comfort but the plain black stones of the walls. More and more, his days were spent within their confines - the same stones that were in the halls, and in her chamber. The longer he was kept away from her, the more it pained him, as he felt the ache rip at his stomach. He could not sleep, wanting - nay needing - her to be more than a phantasmal force. Every sound of clipped heels along the floor made his heart race, in hopes that it would be time to be brought back to her. More often than not though, they did not stop, at least not to take him there.

Was he not good enough to be in her presence? The thought consumed him, that seed growing in the pit of his stomach.

At first, there were tears, and he did his best to keep his sobs silent. Then he began to pray, to his god, the one that had forsaken him to this barren place, and then, finally, to her, that she might find him worthy. Perhaps she would end this, and fill the void that was left in him. When time passed still, and they had not brought him back to her, he began to punish himself, digging his own nails into the flesh of his thighs and chest, until rivulets of blood trailed down his pasty flesh. When the wounds began to heal, he would peel back the scabs and begin a new, letting his body relish in the same pain that ached him to the core.

He eventually took to biting into the thinning flesh of his arms, sinking his teeth until he felt bone and ripping. The taste of copper would fill his mouth, and his mind would offer forth a silent word to her - that she might yet be moved by his dedication. He stiffened in a sickened joy as he desecrated himself for her, feeling a euphoria build through his core. Compulsion drove him forward, to push himself to the brink where his vision faded to white from the pain and pleasure mingling together.

This time, his consciousness did not fade, instead leaving him to lay in the mixing filth of his blood and other bodily fluids, but Kenneth cared not. She would be the only thing that could sate any of his needs, and he no longer was worthy of her. That much he had learned.

The door of his cell flung open, and another of those creatures, a pale vision of her towered over him. "It is needed." It tilted its head, nudging him with a heavy booted foot. "Get to feet."

That was different. The creatures generally drug him, by limb, or hair, to his sessions. He never was required to walk there, as if the creatures took perverse pleasure in the sounds of nails scraping against the stones. The change in tactics made Kenneth wary, and he chose to not move.

The creature sneered and leaned forward with a hiss. "She be unhappy if you not come."

His heart fluttered, warming, that she wanted him there - finally, after all this time. His body ached, the wounds seeping, as he rose to his feet, but he did not let that phase his mind. She bid him come, and he would come to her. He pushed past the creature, stumbling, fumbling along the wall, as he made his way toward her chamber. The end of the hall was ablaze in a brilliant light, and he had to be there. He could almost hear her calling him closer.

As he stepped into the chamber, he finally saw her, in her full glory. Her skin shone like polished bronze in the light of the flames. Red hair, dark as heart's blood, was carefully coifed a top her head, spirals of jet peeking out like a twisted crown of iron thorns. She lounged in her massive black throne, perched in such a fashion, that she might have sprouted great bat wings.

He fell to his knees before the sight, feeling a sense of unworthiness. She was perfection in its fullest glory. Shame burned with a fury through him, as he realized how unfit, covered in his own blood and filth, to be in her presence. His head bowed forward, tears sliding down his cheeks. Why, why would they bring him now to her?

A hand slid under his chin, fingers caressing the rough stubble of hair as they tilted his head back up. He found himself staring into the amber pools, endless and infinite - pools that bid him to drown himself in their depths. "What, what would you do for me, my love?"

The words danced across his skin, his soul. He felt flames burn through his cheeks as he let her eyes bore through him. "Anything."

A soft smile played across her lips. "Anything?"

His mouth went dry, and he could only nod slightly, her hand still cupping his chin, like a lover's embrace. Euphoria built within his soul as at long last he felt whole.

"You, you will do." She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, like a hot desert breeze enveloping him, before an eruption of agony ripped through his chest, her taloned fingers grasping his heart. He gasped, as in one fluid, graceful motion, she removed her arm from his chest, blood flowing like streams down her bronze skin - his heart beating still in her hand. "You will do perfectly."

Returned to Top

# Big Dogs

### J. A. Kyser

### Big Dogs

There were bicycles and skateboards all over the yard. You could hear the squeaky laugh of young boys, their voices changing from alto to baritone in a span of a few seconds. A thud here and there and more snickers. There could be no mistake of what was going on. It was the raucous calls of prepubescent boys. You could hear them, but not see them because of an uneven row of full grown Maples and a giant Weeping Willow, perfect for swinging on. Now there are three things that boys of that age love to do; hang out, act stupid, and pick on others weaker than themselves.

Gunther, who hated his name, wanted to join them. He watched the others boys swinging, falling, and laughing at each other. He wanted to play tag and be one of the boys. Ah, but life is not so easy for all of us. Gunther was tall. Tallertaller than all the other boys, but looked like he was all arms and legs. Something in the way he walked made it look as if he were being controlled by a puppeteer; one who was badly in need of practice. Clothes never fit him, pants were always too short, shirts way too baggy. His parents refused to spend the money he needed for new, cool glasses until he grew out of his clumsy stage. Until then, he was stuck with the black glasses taped in a few places. He didn't realize it but he was what the other boys referred to as a nerd. As he passed the trees he thought to himself, what cool thing could he bring to show them that he was dope enough to hang with them. Yup, he had been looking up the urban dictionary online so he sounded 'with it'.

One day as he was walking past the yard he noticed the boys were even louder than usual. One of the boys had brought his new puppy. They were having a field day. What he didn't notice was the pups whimpering as if he were scared. Gunther missed the pitiful little yelp as he sprinted for home to start cajoling his mother and father for a dog of his own. A dog would break the ice, give them a chance to know him, realize what a wicked cool guy he was.

A few days later when he came in from school; his parents were waiting for him at the front door. It was a puppy, almost. Something wasn't quite right, but he was beautiful to Gunther. A huge head made him look like he would tilt onto his nose at any second. A pudgy belly that almost touched the floor kept him balanced on that end however, his huge head and bulbous tummy acting like counter weights to keep him on an even keel. His tail was long and bushy, the last 5 or 6 inches were bare of hair and tapered to a thin pointy end. In the sun his color was almost blue because his fur was so black. He was a bit clownish now, but he would be a magnificent animal one day. His parents gave him the usual responsibility lecture and handed him a typed piece of paper with numbered commands for the care of the dog.

"Now make sure you read everything before taking him out. He's a very special pet who used to guard our kings and queens in the olden times." Gunther's father recited with a faraway look in his eyes.

"His name will be Pudge because of his belly." Mused Gunther as he put the folded sheet of paper in his pocket. Of course, the first thing he did was walk slowly past the big yard.

"Hey! Grunter! Whatcha got there?" The biggest boy, Chuck, called out.

He pretended not to notice being called Grunter. "My new dog and his name is Pudge. You want to meet him?" Gunther called back.

"Bring him on back where we can see him." Chuck yelled back. Chuck was like team captain. Not only was he the biggest and toughest of the group, but he always had the best ideas on a boring day. A couple of the boys were snickering by then. All it took was one scathing look from Chuck and they all grew quiet at once.

Gunther came around the corner with Pudge. When the boys saw him they could hold back no longer and let out a howl of laughter.

"That has got to be the ugliest dog I have ever seen!" Chuck wrapped his arms around his middle he was laughing so hard.

Gunther laid his hand on Pudge's head wanting to get the animal away from this bunch.

"Here Pudgy Wudgy. Come here you ugly little turd." Chuck said in a softer more tender voice to Pudge, then turning to his buddies he whispered. "Let's see how long this turd will hang on a stick."

Pudge did something then that no one would ever believe. He smiled at them. The corners of his mouth turned up and his lips pulled back just like a smile. This was no cute puppy smile, long, sharp teeth and huge incisors started showing. Pudge's smile grew wider and it seemed his teeth grew longer. The dog scanned the boys like he was sizing up each one. His mouth reminded you of a snake or alligator the way his teeth seemed to grow larger. By now he looked as if he could choke down any one of the boys. Gunther slowly walked onto the porch to watch the action. All the boys ran for the trees which might have been a great idea except for the fact that Pudge climbed like a lizard.

Pudge left no bite marks as proof of his assault, a few scratches which was no more than a kid would get on a usual play day, well maybe a few more. There would probably be a couple extra bruises from Pudge using that bare tip of his tail like a switch from the Willow tree.

Gunther stood on the porch and slowly unfolded the paper his parents had given him. Clearing his throat, every face in the yard turned towards him. "Rule number one, never try to trick Pudge. He is smarter than you. Rule number two, never provoke Pudge by calling him ugly. It hurts his feelings. Rule number three, do not insult Pudge's owner. It irritates him." Gunther took a deep breath and sighed. "Now, as long as the first three rules are followed, I see no reason for any of you to know the rest of them because Pudge and I know they will be followed. If not, Pudge gets angry; you don't want to see Pudge angry." At that, Gunther smiled and his smile was eerily like Pudge's.

The boys all seemed to squirm as Gunther finished his recital of the rules.

"Now remember boys; if you can't run with the big dogs, stay home."

Not one boy would ever tell what he had seen that day. Who would have believe any of them?

# Hiding

### Cathy Pace Matthews

### Hiding

Mary was in her basement where you couldn't even see her through a crack in a curtain of a window. She had been down here now for a long time trying not to be discovered.

She found herself down here more and more often of late. She had a neighbor. Oh not just any neighbor but a neighbor. You know the type. The one who is always knocking on your door if it's locked or just walking right in if they happen to find it unlocked. Mary didn't leave her door unlocked anymore.

It wasn't only the barging in at all hours of the day or night but she no longer felt comfortable on any social media site. If she signed on there was that neighbor ready to pounce. The minute she signed in the neighbor would jump right in. Mary no longer had many friends that the neighbor hadn't friended as well so there was no privacy. She was afraid to even send someone a private message or phone them anymore because the crazy neighbor had become friends with everyone Mary knew. Hell in a lot of cases that neighbor had even made friends with Mary's own family.

Things had gotten so bad she hadn't retrieved her mail in days. When she did leave the house it was in the early morning hours in order not to be seen by this neighbor. Mary had even called the police about this particular neighbor but they had acted like she was the one with something wrong with her.

Mary had been so afraid to leave the house she hadn't gone to work in over a week and her boss had called this morning telling her that she had better be in the office the next morning with an excuse from a doctor or not to bother coming back in at all. She hadn't bothered to answer her cell phone but had listened to the message her boss had left. Mary was quickly losing everything. She had tried to talk to her mom about this but her mom had ignored her. It was as if her mom hadn't heard a word she was saying. Shortly after calling her mom she had found where the neighbor had friended her mom. She was alone and there was no one she could trust or who would even believe her.

Mary realized she needed to go to the bathroom but that would mean that she would have to leave the sanctuary of her basement. There wasn't a bathroom down here. Mary thought she might have one installed down here but it really wouldn't matter if she lost her job because she wouldn't be able to afford to keep her home and she would have to move. Mary looked around the basement to see if there was anything she could use as a temporary toilet but saw nothing that would accommodate her needs. She would have to leave her hiding place and go upstairs unless she wanted to soil her clothes.

Mary took a deep breath trying to work up the courage to leave what had become her entire world. She had been hiding down here for days now. She tried to remember the last time she had relieved herself. For some reason she couldn't recall the last time she had even left the basement. Was she losing her mind? Why could she not remember when she had walked up those stairs?

Mary felt her bowels empty themselves and the need to make a run to the bathroom was no longer an issue. She should have clean clothes in the dryer and decided she would simply change her garments putting the dirty ones in a plastic bag. She knew she had plenty of those down here.

She started to come out from behind the boxes she had made into her little hidey hole in but heard someone knocking on her front door. Mary froze in her place not daring to move. Deep down she knew that whoever was at the front door wouldn't be able to hear her but she was still afraid to move. No that wasn't even right, she wasn't just afraid to move she was unable to move. She was that scared.

The knocking came again along with the ringing of the doorbell. Mary wanted to slap her hands against her ears to block out the sound but knew that to do so would only keep her from hearing anything should the neighbor try to mess with the lock on the door.

Mary remained where she was long after whoever was at the door seemed to have left still afraid to leave what to her had become her whole world behind the boxes. She knew she should make an attempt to clean herself up but her fear held her captive making it impossible for her to move.

Her phone rang again and Mary again didn't bother to answer it. She no longer trusted anyone, she felt had no one she could turn to. She wondered if she would allow herself to stay down here to starve to death or would she finally be overtaken with hunger resulting in her crawling her way back up the steps to try and get something to eat.

Mary must have closed her eyes and slept because she was awakened by a loud crash coming from upstairs. She coward in her little hiding place knowing that the neighbor had busted in her door. Now that neighbor was coming to get her. She was so dehydrated at this point that tears wouldn't even fall from her eyes. All she could do was wait here for the end to come and she knew it was coming.

***

The two officers made their way through the house looking for the woman who lived here. They had gotten a call that she hadn't been seen in days. She hadn't shown up for work and her mother had tried to reach her many times but she hadn't been answering her phone.

When they found the steps leading to the basement they drew their weapons. Neither could tell you why but something didn't seem right as they had opened the door. There was a horrible smell coming from the lower level, they were both unsure of what might be down there.

"Oh God do you smell that?" One officer said to the other.

"Yes I smell it. This isn't going to be good. Hello Ms. Collins you down here? Mary?" The second officer didn't know if he wanted an answer or not.

The two men carefully walked almost the entire basement when they noticed the fortress of boxes stacked close to a far wall. They could tell from where they were that there was a small space between the wall, the boxes were big enough for someone to hide behind.

One officer motioned to the other letting him know that he wanted him to supply cover as he made his way toward the corner of the large room. The other one nodded his head as his partner made his way toward what could be a setup.

"Oh Jesus Christ!" The first officer said as he got his first look at what was behind the boxes.

"What is it?" The second officer asked as he came up behind the first.

"Crap." The second officer was trying hard not to lose his lunch.

"Call it in. Someone really did a number on this poor girl." The first officer was having the same problem as his partner.

***

Mary wanted to cry from joy. The men were law enforcement. They must have decided she had been telling the truth and they were finally here to help her, finally she could get cleaned up, maybe even save her job.

***

"How long do you think she has been dead?" The second officer asked

"I don't know but I would say for at least a week.

# An Absent Child

### Gary Jefferies

### An Absent Child

Marsh Bank House was a quintessential Victorian residence, comprising five downstairs rooms symmetrically arranged around a grand central staircase of dark oak. Half wall paneling carried this theme into two side rooms; one a library lined with aged tomes bound mostly in leather, and the other a music room, equipped with a grand piano angled in one corner. The hall between both was considerable and floored with a mosaic tile. Opposite the base of the stairs was the entrance door. From outside it was framed in white marble, receiving a graveled path that drew people in through the modest front garden that terminated in Derwent Street.

Behind the library, and connected to it, was a day room overlooking the gardens. This provided access to an orangery that ran the length of the external wall. To the right there was a dining room, located behind the stairs, and then a working kitchen lying behind the music room. Separate doors to either side of the stairs accessed the latter two. The kitchen also had access to a pantry and cellar.

It was the rear that gave rise to the name. There was just under an acre of landscaped gardens including an old stable block. All this overlooked wasteland that was mostly waterlogged swamp, and locally termed the Marshes.

Upstairs the floor plan was similar. A banister railed landing rolled off the stairs left and right and then back on itself leading to the front elevation. This left views of the stair case and entrance lobby resplendent in its opulence. Above the four main corner rooms on the ground-floor, were sizeable bedrooms. The fifth bedroom was directly off the top of the stairs and, for the most part, always avoided. Not that anyone consciously realized this, but nevertheless no-one willingly chose to use it. At least not after Elisabeth Beechworth moved in.

She had known something was amiss on the day her husband, Albert, gave a tour of the newly acquired property. Things moved in her peripheral vision, but always ceased to exist when she turned to look directly. Then there was the smell; very faint and not always there. A scent that reminded her of lavender and something else that she couldn't quite put her finger on.

"Why here Albert?"

"Because, my dear, it is a most splendid residence and it will be an excellent place to raise our child."

Elisabeth could see the delight radiating from his face. It was soul destroying to see, but the truth would destroy him. She smiled back.

"In that case we shall make certain everything is ready for our new arrival."

It was four weeks to the day she became aware that she was avoiding one room in particular. Initially, it was just that, being at the very top of the staircase, it was not the ideal place to set up the main bedroom and nursery. This was settled to be the left wing with the right side being for guests. The room in the middle was therefore undisturbed and destined to become a study at some later date. However, as time wore on, she noticed her path actually swerved away from the door whenever passing in front of it. On one day in particular this thought distilled itself almost audibly and Elisabeth paused. She put her ear to the door, half expecting to find she was being rather silly. Unfortunately for her things took a turn for the worse.

Come in Elisabeth, we have been expecting you.

It was only a whisper in her head, but bore vitriol and carried an undertone that fueled irresistible despair. It was also incredibly hypnotic, encouraging her hand to turn a polished brass door handle despite her subconscious screaming no. As she was forced to cross the threshold time slowed. Elisabeth noticed the room looked much older than everywhere else and it was cold, very cold. She shivered. It reminded her of the cellar; dark, dank and dingy. This room was unloved and desperately in need of renovation.

"Is there anybody in here?"

She asked the question knowing the room was empty, and that the voice had been in her mind. Idly, she wandered toward the window tracing finger tips through the dust gathered on an old dressing table. The view from the window took in the Marshes. It was as if the random planting of trees in the garden were not random at all when seen from this room. They provided a deciduous corridor, taking the eye beyond the garden and across the wetlands to what looked like a folly. Distant and entombed in overgrowth, but clearly visible from this room; almost as if it was the only place destined to be able to see it. From the grounds, only an isolated copse existed far out in the Marshes. Rumor had it that ghosts collected there. Unwary wanderers drowned in the bogs and pools whose souls crawled from the waters drawn to the tiny island of dry land. Elisabeth had considered this to be tattle designed to keep children from wandering into the Marshes. Staring at it, as she was now, made her rather more uncertain.

Not a folly Elisabeth, an un-consecrated chapel...a tomb.

The voice in her mind caught her by surprise.

"Who are you?"

Someone that can solve all your problems.

That made her smile. If only things were that simple, she thought, turning away from the window and looking back into the room. The view turned from reflection into decay. On her right was a small bed covered in pink bedding, that itself was overlaid in cobwebs and mold. The floor was wood, and while reasonably solid, there were signs that age and neglect were beginning to eat into it. The corner space, left of the door, was home to a mildewed rocking horse, and on the floor next to it several clothes peg dolls. In places the wallpaper had yielded to damp, and unveiled the crumbling structure beneath. Elisabeth found it impossible to believe that behind the door everyone avoided lay a derelict room nobody knew existed. It was lost in time and filled with something not in keeping with the rest of the house. Walls to either side showed no sign of what existed just beyond. They were warm, clean smelling and fresh. This was an impossibility, and yet here she was. Inside her heart was racing. The atmosphere was filled with something when she walked in. It was only now that she could touch it properly, and the accent was fear. Clearly it was a child's room, but the residue was not of happiness; more neglect and terror. Questions formed in her mind. Who was she, what happened to her, why was this room keeping itself hidden and why had it called out now?

Elisabeth turned back to the window. With the sun at a slightly different angle she noticed something new. Clearly the trees were arranged to view the folly, or tomb as the now absent mind voice had corrected her, but there was also a trail leading through the Marshes. She blinked. It stood out so dramatically that it was astonishing she had not seen it before. Then so did the very room she was in, maybe it was connected.

Behind her a blood curdling child's scream ripped her thoughts from the window and back into the room. In front of her a small transparent girl was backing towards the door. Spectral hands hovered in front of her face, her eyes wide and staring through Elisabeth towards the window. The girl began to turn rapidly towards the door, panicked words added to the disappearing echoes of screams,

"You've woken him, run...now"

With that the girl disappeared clean through the closed door. Elisabeth stood for a moment shaking. The scream had made her jump so badly she feared she might topple through the window. Her stomach was cramping and she was hyperventilating. The sight of the terrified spectral girl made her mouth run dry and her disappearance through the door almost caused a faint. At least until her own instincts kicked in, and that was partly due to the sudden drop in temperature.

Elisabeth ran out of the room after the child just in time to see her turn towards the kitchens at the bottom of the stairs. Behind her the door slammed shut, but Elisabeth was no longer paying it anymore attention.

"Wait," she shouted, but the girl continued through the kitchen door.

By the time Elisabeth followed, the child's shade had disappeared. Heart pounding and a little out of breath, she paused taking stock. It struck her immediately something had changed. Something else was now in the house, more specifically the room. Maybe it had always been there. The subliminal reason or higher conscious telling everyone to walk right on past the door. What you don't know can't hurt you, pretend it doesn't exist; out if sight out of mind, safer that way. That thought extracted another, cellar, she fled to the cellar.

Elisabeth opened the door leading to the descending steps. It was a large and dismal place with a similar feel to the room upstairs; though not filled with damp. Light trickled in through six small widows mounted high on the walls in front and to the left of where she now stood. A whitewashed stone table stood in the center, laden with vegetables and assorted foodstuffs. Her heart was still beating loudly, and nerves were still on edge from the suddenness of events upstairs. Curiosity overcame both. Reaching the table she lit a candle resting in a holder. Using it, Elisabeth began to walk slowly round the outside of the subterranean room, scrutinizing both ground and walls; sensing there was more here than cooks might uncover on their daily business. Shadows retreated with crooked edges under the flickering glow emitting from her taper, adding to the eerie unease pricking the back of her mind. Turning to the final corner she detected a faint glow leaking through crumbled mortar some two feet above the ground on, what looked like, part of a chimney stack built floor to ceiling.

Curious, she thought, there are no fire pits down here.

The sound of crying seeped through the brickwork, barely audible, but there nevertheless. Elisabeth drew closer, hardly daring to breathe. Gingerly, she pressed a trembling palm against the brickwork and put her left ear against the wall. The crying subsided into a whimper.

"Are you the girl from upstairs?" she ventured in a quiet motherly tone; inside she was shaking.

A tiny voice replied "Yes, are you running too?"

"From what?"

"The thing in my room. It used to come into my room at night until..." she paused, "and now you've woken it up again."

Elisabeth felt like something just walked over her grave. Ignoring the obvious question she continued, "Why are you behind there child?"

The weeping began again and, between gasping sobs, the reply chilled Elisabeth causing hairs to rise on the back of her neck.

"They said I was a monster and put me in here to die."

Swallowing nothing, Elisabeth shuddered, and a wave of empty horror rippled through her soul. They buried you alive. Trying to keep her voice steady she knelt down, still with her palm touching the tomb.

"Why on earth did they think that?"

The child's voice spat venom.

"Because of him."

"Who?"

The reply was cold as death.

"The Feriante, the one you just woke up."

There was a sharp pain in her hand and Elisabeth quickly pulled it away. Blood was trickling from the center of her palm from two tiny marks.

Inside the brickwork, something very un-childlike began laughing.

# Question to Kill

### Sitarra "LullaDIEs" Sefton

### Psycho #1 - Question to Kill

### A Tale of Morbid Curiosity:

Refers to those who find curiosity addictive, or rather the neurological reaction to satisfying curiosity addictive. Usually entails an interest in death or things causing physical or emotional torment. Curiosity is still considered a phenomenon of the brain, its exact cause unknown (although there are logical theories).

I stared at my subject as I crouched next to him. He was a young man, thinner than most with long brown hair. His bushy eyebrows overcame the small oval face and dominated his features. He looked just like an old picture of Jesus my Grandma once had. I was sure he could answer my question.

Not yet though. The subject was taking a chloroform nap, and so my curiosity would have to wait.

I was a relatively small woman, weighing only 115 pounds. Dragging the unconscious male into the old slaughter barn was a difficult task, but I managed. I'd learned long ago to kidnap the smaller ones. There was no reason to make things any more difficult than need be.

I sighed to myself. Break time was over and it was time to get back to work. Standing up from the dirt covered floor, I walked over to a wall of tools close by. I looked at each one in turn, admiring the damage they could all potentially do. Hammers for smashing. Saws for sawing. Pliers for pulling. Knives for slicing. Blowtorches for, well, you get the idea. The collection was large and included everything I needed to quell my inquiring mind.

The barn itself and surrounding property belonged to my family. We were ranchers and farmers by trade but after the last generation found other means of work, the old farm was left abandoned and forgotten. The property still belonged to the family but no one ever went out there.

No one but me.

I grabbed a length of hefty rope from the wall's hooks and proceeded to the center of the barn. My booted steps echoed with a soft thump against the old wooden floorboards as I moved around; thump... thump... thump... thump. There was no reason to be quiet, and so I wasn't. Spotting a sturdy beam above, I tossed the rope up to it. The thick, braided cord wrapped around on the first try and fell far enough down the other side for me to grab it if I jumped.

You would think I had done this before, I thought to myself while smiling.

Once I could easily grab both ends of the rope I turned back to the subject. He looked so peaceful. I didn't think he would remember  his abduction or understand what was about to come.

I'll have to ask him, I told myself.

I marched over to the man purposefully, my boots declared my determination with each step. Thump, thump, thump, thump! I grabbed him by the foot and pulled his unconscious form across the floor, leaving drag marks in the dirt and grime below, covering him in unsettled dust as I went.

Quickly I set to work at tying his wrists together with some old wire found among the barns general clutter. Once satisfied he wasn't going anywhere, I grabbed one of the rope ends and tied his wrists with it again, before wrapping and knotting it through the center space for extra security. I wanted to be sure no knots failed and if any did, I wanted backup ones.

No failures this time. My question needs answering. I reminded myself harshly.

Grabbing the free piece of rope still dangling from the rafters, I pulled it over my shoulder and started walking away, hoisting the man in the air as I did. Once I reached the metal latch secured to a distant wall beam, I tied the rope off.

When I turned to see my handy work, I couldn't help but feel satisfied. The man hung by his arms a good two feet away from the drab floor, his feet slightly swaying as they dangled. I grinned at how smoothly my tasks were going and went back to the wall of tools to prepare for the next step in my experiment.

In the back stall of the barn I stood before a table writing my hypothesis. Scattered all around me was the paperwork that accompanied the other experiments I'd performed in the past. Hundreds of random notes, medical texts, newspaper articles, etc. littered the small space,  piling up in the corners and hiding the floor. There was a wall covered in old metal filing cabinets and whatever didn't fit in them found a home elsewhere. Even the walls were covered in random facts scribbled or pinned up for quick reference.

"Subject #254:

Male, Caucasian, Young Adult

Experiment:

Skin

Skin is a thin layer of tissue acting as a perimeter around the internal body, keeping unwanted germs out. It is also the largest organ of the body, and arguably the most important.

How important?

After skinning subject #254 I hope to have that question answered.

Hypothesis:

Without the outer tissue layer the body should succumb to bacteria, viruses, and disease. I'm anticipating that dehydration will be my biggest obstacle."

Once satisfied that my scribbled notes would be sufficient, I pushed them to the side and went to work gathering the necessary equipment.

While I was inspecting a couple different styles of knives, I heard a groan come from the main room. My head snapped up and I stood still.

Yup. Definitely awake. I thought as another moan traveled through the silence.

I dropped the knives onto the table noisily and strode to the rows of cabinets. Yanking a drawer open, I retrieved a vial of liquid morphine and a syringe. I debated on the dosage for a moment; 200 mg was enough to kill a person but I didn't want him waking up either. Deciding 150 mg would get the job done, I made a silent prayer that he didn't have a low tolerance as I measured the medication. Giving the needle tip a few taps to remove the air bubbles, I bound out of the stall and into the main room.

I found him flailing around uselessly, trying to get his hands free of the bindings. The grogginess of the chloroform prevented him from succeeding and as I watched from behind I found the sight somewhat humorous. When he finally gave up, I walked behind him and gave his hair a playful tug, pulling his head back.

"What?! Wait - Who are you? Why am I here?" He yelled in a fury.

So typical, I silently mused. Always the same questions.

The anger was also typical, at least in the males. Females tended to be more hysterical initially. I'd found a few individuals in which the roles reversed, but they were few and far between.

I stood just out of his reach. We were far from eye level, but even with him looking down on me with his raging brown eyes, it was clearly me who had control of the situation. I felt the need to watch the emotions stir within his features. This was a science project after all, and the subject's emotional state during the process could hold important data. I didn't want to miss any of it. Unfortunately, I only found confusion, rage, and fear; all of these expected.

"Why?" I finally repeated back to him.

"Yes you crazy bitch! Why am I here?" He screamed.

"Because I have a question." I replied coyly.

"What? Ok, fine. What's the question?" He asked, baffled by my response.

I walked around him, needle firmly clasped in my hand, "Do you remember how you got here?"

"What, no. Wh'ahh..." He gasped at the end.

I'd shoved the needle into his neck as soon as I heard the words I needed and pushed on the tip, pumping chemicals into his system and forcing him to sleep. Confident that he would remain unconscious, I went back to my work area to collect my knives.

It took even more morphine to keep the man compliant and still, but it was well worth the use of precious supplies. I couldn't risk having him thrash around while I was performing the surgery. If I cut into something other than the skin itself, the entire experiment would go to waste, and I would need to start anew with a different subject.

Carefully, I made the first incision on his back with a fillet knife, being extra careful not to go too deep as I ran the blade evenly down the large area. Pleased with my work thus far, I turned the knife sideways and began gliding it between the flesh and skin, pulling the external organ up and away as I did.

I did the task in silence, carefully working my way from his back to his arms. I wasn't concerned with the skin underneath the bindings. Given time it would be rubbed raw by the friction of his movements and so there was no need to waste time on such tediousness. Next came the subject's chest and torso. By time the crimson map of internal workings was unveiled from his top half, a decent sized puddle of blood had collected on the filthy floor below. The deep red liquid ran down his still unharmed legs, dripped steadily off his toes, and landed with a trickling plop on the ground.

The fingers and toes gave me some difficulty, the skin between the digits refused to be removed at first. The angle was an awkward one to try and work within such small spaces, but I succeeded. Skinning his 'manhood', if you would call it that, was excruciatingly tedious. The skin covering the gender based organ was already so thin, it was nearly impossible to get rid of. I was thankful the member was small, or I may have lost my patience and chopped the damned thing off completely.

By that time  the majority of the subject's body was left bare the blood puddle on the ground nearly doubled in size. It no longer trickled but mildly flowed from the subject's feet, putting me in a dilemma. I pursed my lips while contemplating a solution to the massive blood loss and disappeared back into the furthest stall.

After rummaging through the filing cabinets I finally located yet another small vial labeled, "K1". Vitamin K's used to thicken the blood flow and was found to play an important role in the formation of blood clots. Filling a syringe with the compound, I quickly made my way back to the subject. I was only gone for a few moments, but the blood puddle increased in size significantly.

The needle slid into the man's flesh easily, and I slowly began injecting the medication into his veins. I waited patiently for almost ten minutes, staring at the blood flowing from the suspended man, focusing on it. When the pace died back down to a manageable dribble, I nodded happily and regained my grip on the knife.

His neck and head was all that was left. As I passed over his features carefully, I ruined one of the eyes by accidentally cutting an eyelid off. Instantly I became furious at my carelessness. I tossed the blade across the room and kicked away the small stepping stool I stood on. The items clattered and banged across the floorboards, reflecting my frustration.

A small mistake, I told myself as I tried to remain calm, it won't affect the outcome much.

Finding the knife once more, I replaced the steps and finished with the face. I made no more flaws as I pulled the remaining skin free.

There. Perfect. I thought as I stood back to admire the exposed muscles and tendons. The blue of his veins reminded me of a road map, twisting and turning throughout his rosy red form. Fresh blood oozed from his body, but not to an extent that would cause the subjects demise, thanks to vitamin K.

How long will it take for you to die now I wondered? How long can you survive the onslaught of bacteria and disease before you finally grow cold?

I left him like that, but not before placing a large mirror in his view. I wanted him to appreciate the time I put into his death.

It was time for the subject's daily meal and water. I couldn't have starvation or dehydration ruining my answer. His death needed to be due only to the loss of his skin. Nothing else would suffice.

I carried a bowl of oatmeal and a bottle of water out of the old farm house. I would stay there until my curiosity was quelled, unwilling to leave the subject unattended before then.

Halfway across the field I began hearing his screams and curses. When I reached the entryway it became clear that he was thrashing around violently, his figure swinging in and out of view of the door.

"Calm yourself." I called to him as I brought the food in, "It could be worse."

"You fucking psycho bitch! What the fuck do you think you're doing! I'll kill you! I swear I'll kill you!"

"Yes, well. In the meantime, how about some dinner?" I quipped, ignoring his outburst.

He refused to calm down enough to eat. The man insisted on continuing his panicked habits, thrashing and hurling obscenities as if it would change his predicament. I left the meal under him, placing it in the puddle of blood he'd produced. Perhaps the smell mixed with his empty stomach would make him more apt to cooperate the next day.

Just as I suspected, the man had given into his hunger. He didn't speak when I brought in his bowl of spaghetti, nor when I hand fed him. I found his silence to be unusual, but assumed it was due to feelings of despair.

I stayed behind after his meal was finished, making sure he had his fill of water before departing. The food wasn't the biggest issue. He could go weeks without any food. It was dehydration that was my main concern. I couldn't risk it.

I'd taken notice to his drying form, and became concerned with his hydration. The body had mostly scabbed over, leaving it appearing rough and deformed. Still, it didn't seem typical for him to appear so dry.

Deciding it was necessary for the subject to have water access, I rolled an old barrel into the barn and positioned it near him. After sliding the garden hose through a small window and filling the drum up, I cut a length of straw sized, plastic hosing. With one end submerged inside the barrel, I wrapped the other around the subject's neck and arms so his mouth could easily access it.

"In case you get thirsty." I told him.

"Night." I called over my shoulder as I left him to his thoughts.

It was now the subjects second day. I grabbed a plate of chicken strips and french fries off the counter before heading to the barn.

He was growing weaker, the diseases were starting to take over his skinless form. Some discoloration could be seen in his tissue as well as a multitude of sores that seeped a yellowish white puss. The eye left without an eyelid had long dried out. Now it protruded from his face and had a dark bluish green color. There was a sour smell to him as well, a mixture of dried urine and rotting flesh.

The odor attracted all sorts of insects to the man. Flies, gnats, and mosquitoes alike flocked to his dangling body, both feeding on the decaying tissue and laying eggs in the warm gore. I watched in fascination as his flesh seemed to crawl and wriggle with the bugs devouring him slowly from the inside out. I was growing excited, as I hadn't foreseen insects as a variable to the experiment. I felt enlightened by the sight, the satisfaction of understanding seemingly euphoric.

How much longer? I wondered, eager for my ultimate answer.

"Why don't you just kill me?" The man asked weakly, interrupting my personal thoughts.

It looked as though he'd been crying. One wet streak ran down his decaying face from the good eye. The exposed one had popped at some point, its insides became a comfortable bed for a family of flies. Putrid, dark greenish purple goop dried in a strip down that side.

I chuckled, he was so naive.

"I am killing you silly. It's just taking longer than usual." I replied light heartedly.

He began weeping then, a sound I found to be highly irritating. He refused to eat too. Sighing in frustration, I slid the plate into the puddle of blood, bile, and feces he'd produced before leaving.

Three days. I thought as I stood in front of his lifeless body. His muscles and tissues were one giant, inflamed red scab with large areas of purples, blues, and even some yellows due to extreme infection. Some spots had lost their fleshy texture, becoming surprisingly tough to the touch. The sores easily tripled overnight, and the fluids that discharged from them left chunky, yellowish green streaks down his skinless body. The smell was now overpowering and could be noticed even outside the old slaughter barn. A cloud of black buzzing circled the subject and every area on him had an insects either making a corpsey home or feasting on death.

It took three days for the exposure to kill you.

I grinned from ear to ear. Finally, I had an answer. My smile left only a few moments later though.

I had a new question.

# One Woman's Dream

### Mary Dunaway

### One Woman's Dream

It had been six months since she didn't have to spend her days and nights alone. Things were so different now, though she thought she was adjusting well. She was able to go back to work, cook her meals, even spending time with other family members. While her routine hadn't seemed to change that drastically; things were just not the same. For six months she hadn't put a lot of thought into it and just carried on. She even started cleaning out the house; sorting things for Goodwill, selling some things, and of course saving what she couldn't part with. She had gotten quite a bit accomplished without missing a step. Despite her strength in doing all these things, she still couldn't get past the fact that things had indeed changed dramatically.

It was a typical week for her; filled with her new routine of work, doctor's appointments, medications, and of course her nightly ritual of going through the house and sorting things into their proper places. She had managed to do this without fail almost all week without thinking about what she was really doing. The reality just escaped her most of the time, so she could focus on the task at hand. On a Friday night after a long week at work she arrived home extremely tired. She sat and watched some TV with her dinner just like every other night. She finished her laundry, did some dishes, and decided that the sorting would wait until the morning. For some reason all she wanted to do was just sleep.

She woke up the next day, nothing seemed any different at first. Then she realized things were in fact very different. She could smell coffee coming from the kitchen, the living room TV was on, and the slight aroma of a cigarette burning was coming down the hallway. With the 2 break ins last year, one being deadly, she was absolutely terrified to think that she was about to face this on her own this time. She knew what she had to do. She jumped up in a panic, heart racing, and with shaking hands, she grabbed her gun from her hiding spot. She quickly made sure it was still loaded and removed the safety; just like he had always taught her to do. She walked down the short hallway which seemed like a mile long this particular morning. She stopped before she reached the door. She realized she didn't grab her phone, but it was simply too late to turn back now. She took a deep breath and stepped around the corner with the gun drawn.

She couldn't believe what she was seeing. It simply couldn't be. He was sitting in his chair, drinking his morning coffee and having a smoke, just like any other morning. He looked at her in amazement and laughing he said "what do you think you're doing?"

She lowered the gun to her side, and with tears in her eyes but a smile in her voice she said "what are you doing here?"

"What do you mean what am I doing here?" He asked still laughing but a little confused.

He stood up and walking over to her took the gun from her hand and hugged her. "It's ok."

He sat her down on the couch and he took his chair like nothing had really happened. She was just sitting there staring at him, crying, confused, but so happy.

With a slight grin, he looked at her and asked, "Where is the rest of my stuff?"

She stared blankly and explained that she had been getting rid of a lot of things since Christmas. She stood up and started pacing and explaining all the work she done: how she had been cleaning, selling, donating etc. She was apologizing, and explaining that it had to be done.

He stood up and walking over to her gave her a hug and said "Don't worry about its ok, I'm not mad; you've done a good job going through all this stuff."

She was so overjoyed she didn't know what to say just so she asked if he wanted breakfast.

He laughed and said, "You know I'm the cook in this house." They both laughed because they knew it was true, and he went and made them breakfast.

They sat there for what seemed like hours. Just like before, simply having breakfast, drinking coffee and talking about nothing in particular and everything all at once. To her, it seemed like the best conversation they had ever had together.

Just then her phone started to ring. She ignored it

At first the damn thing wouldn't stop ringing. She groaned and reluctantly went back to her room to answer it. All the while still not really believing what was happening. She hadn't been so happy to walk down that hallway in so very long. As soon as she touched her phone everything went quiet. She realized the phone hadn't actually been ringing. She sat there in bed, alone, silent, confused, and all around bewildered. The smell of coffee was gone, the TV was off, the house was quiet again like before and she was alone in bed. She sat there in the silence, realizing that it was all just a dream. She sat there for hours crying and wondering what it all could mean.

She had never really felt his presence before like people said she would. She had never felt him watching over her, or seen anything that could've been any sign of him still with her. She cried out of happiness. It was as if her dream was real. If just for one fleeting moment he was still there just to tell her that it was in fact ok. It took a great deal of time but she eventually took comfort in this. Maybe it was just his own way of letting her know it was all ok. Though all she wanted now was to have that dream again. So that for just one more morning; she could feel whole again.

# Carpe Librum

### S. J. Lucas

### Carpe Librum

The drive to her grandparents' house took no more than forty five minutes, yet it felt like the longest forty five minutes of her life. She had left directly after the memorial, not having wanted to hang around with the other members of the family and cry. Everyone had their own way of dealing with death, and Akari was no exception. She needed to be in their home, her grandparent's home - the home that they had all built together with love.

Akari drove up the gravel drive that twisted and turned through her grandfather's prize-winning garden to the house. She parked her car in front of the porch steps, claimed her suitcases from the back seat, and unlocked the front door.

The foyer was unchanged since her childhood, except for the altar displaying the photos of her missing grandparents, and the dancing flames from candles surrounding them. A long- faded floral runner covered the parquet floor from the rounded green-stained oak front door to the hallway opposite.

Her grandmother's original landscape oil paintings, depicting grazing livestock of the woolly variety, hung in the same antique frames on the same nails on the wood paneled walls. Akari stood in silence, battling the weight of nostalgia and heartache that threatened to overwhelm her.

Akari could feel them here, the shadows of their daily routine, the echoes of their infectious laughter, the wisdom of their whispered words of advice...

All energy drained from her limbs and her bags thudded to the floor, causing a tiny poof of dust to mushroom from the carpet. Akari bit back a sob, enduring the bittersweet duet of irreplaceable memories and devastating loss.

The feeling was unreal.

The knowledge was unbearable; her grandparents would never walk within these rooms again. Yet, standing here she felt as if their souls were reaching out, as if they had been right there beside her from the minute she walked through the door.

Akari let her thoughts roam through the house, feelings of familiarity and loss washed over her. Each room was separated by magnificent wooden archways. Her gran had spent years carving the floral designs and the quirky names she had given each room into the arched panels, and as a child Akari had spent many hours watching her gran work. Akari earned what she could, taking lessons from a true artist. Akari owed the credit for her thriving woodwork business to her gran, and her heart gave another painful throb within her aching breast.

The words 'Le Theatre', surrounded by blooming hibiscus, was carved in the archway above the Family room door. Her gran had always said that family was the best entertainment when gathered together in this room, and all she had had to do was add sushi and sake.

Akari walked slowly through the lounge; taking mental note of every ornament, every piece of artwork, of how her grandfather's coffee cup had stained the wood on his chair, and that the T.V remote still sat where he had last left it, and every piece of furniture that had been theirs, and was now hers. She briefly touched the pineapple stitch doily that lay on the side table next to her grandmother's chair, and cried because just like her, the doily would never be complete.

Akari could not stop the flow of tears that blurred her vision even when she tried, but was startled out of sorrow when one of her great-grandmother's Chinese fans tumbled from the mantelpiece on a gust of cold wind. She wiped her tears on her sleeve; walked over and gasped in shock at the unexplained shadow that briefly hovered over her when she bent to retrieve the fallen fan. Cubes of ice slid down her spine. Something was wrong.

Akari ran from the room, apprehension filled her stomach, but she composed herself as best as she could.

All her efforts came undone the minute she walked into the hallway.

The hallway ran the length of the house from front to back, with the bedrooms, bathroom, and a library all branching off to either side from it, and then leading to the kitchen in the back. Her grandmother had aptly named this 'Memory Lane', and the words were intricately carved amidst a gigantic cherry blossom tree, the branches of which spanned along the length of both walls of the hallway. Here family photos hung within the Family Tree at artful intervals. She could barely make out the faces through her tears and painful sobs crippled her halfway down the hall where she fell to her knees, head bowed beneath the grotesque sneering faces of her family. Blood streamed from the cracking carved branches along the walls. The eerie disjointed whispers of unseen forces echoed throughout the hall...

Akari lay there and cried, but her sobbing was broken by the gongs of the antique grandfather clock striking the hour. She raised her head slowly to find no tormented faces, nor seeping blood from the walls. Seven gongs and a deep need to exit the hallway spurred her on to the comfort of the kitchen.

Her grandmother had carved her name 'Mei's', a gigantic apple, the mathematical constant symbol of 'pi', and the word 'pantry' – so it read 'Mei's Apple Pie Pantry in the arch above the door. The kitchen brought no solace; neither the flickering lights nor the intense sound of the dripping tap eased the tension building in Akari's gut.

Akari found herself standing at the doorway to her grandfather's great library, under the archway carved to look like the open pages of books surrounding the words 'Carpe Librum', and shuddered. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and her heart thumped liquidly in true fear. The ornate lamps on either side of the doorway flickered ominously, and she screamed when an invisible entity pushed her away from the library entrance.

A gigantic tome bound in emerald leather flew from her grandfather's desk and landed at her feet with a resounding thump. Akari jumped back and tried to run, but it was like trying to run through molasses her feet would just not move! Bloodcurdling susurrations screeched in varying octaves from within the room.

"Stop this! Stop doing this at once!" she screamed.

The book shifted forward.

Gold letters gleamed in Japanese along the cover... _"Seize the book!"_

She bent down to retrieve the heavy book but a disjointed voice screamed, _"Don't touch it!"_ and she felt her hand being slapped away.

"Grandfather, Grandmother, is that you? It's me, it's Akari."

No reply.

After several seconds she bent down to pick the book up again, and fell backwards, screaming in agony when the pages whipped by in supernatural speed, and released the face of a hideous demon from between pages that putrefied and bled. The lights flickered in the library and strange shadows swirled like oily soup in the gilded mirror above the fireplace. Books flew off the religion shelf, pummeling her from every angle.

Akari was on her hands and knees, her heart beat a fearful rhythm and cold sweat prickled along the too sensitive skin on her arms and legs. The demon reached out from the book, and yanked Akari's ankle like a magnet to the fridge. Several things happened at once when her skin touched the page: the lights blew, the book began to smoke and smolder, and strange words appeared in Japanese, Latin, French and even hieroglyphics, while a banshee- like scream pierced through the cacophony of books whipping around the room.

Akari whimpered. A black figure appeared from the mirror. The Shinigami and it was coming directly for her. She shut her eyes and began reciting an old Japanese Omamori her grandmother had taught her, a prayer for protection, then...

...everything went blank.

***

When Akari woke, her grandmother and grandfather stood before her, holding hands and smiling sadly. They reached out to her and she ran on unsteady legs towards them, embracing them wordlessly while tears rolled down her pale cheeks.

"What happened to me?"

"The tome was cursed, Akari. It was written by the Hakutaku and disguised as a normal reading book," he said.

"Hakutaku?" she repeated. "But that's a beast which hands down knowledge on harmful spirits and it's not real though, Granddad. It's a myth!"

"Our neighbor, Mr. Browning was angry with your grandmother and me for some time because we kept beating him in the woodcarving and gardening competitions. At the beginning of the year he travelled to Japan to visit his son who teaches English to the children there, and he came across this old book. He must have had someone explain what it is, and thought he would pay us back by giving this as a 'gift' to us." Grandfather's voice was bitter and sad.

"Our home was cursed the minute I seized that book," Granddad said. "I had released the cursed words of the Hakutaku spirits into our world, and they could now absorb us into theirs. Or, they could devour us."

"What do you mean devour us, Granddad?"

"The minute that book was opened words from that realm were released in to this one. They – those words - captured our souls," he repeated.

"So you are saying we are dead?" Akari screeched. 'Eaten by demonic words in a cursed book?"

"Yes, Akari, this is the truth of it. Did you not see the Shinigami, the Japanese grim reaper?" asked Grandmother.

"I know I saw something," Akari admitted, "but I said the Omamori you taught me and then everything went blank, then I woke up here. Wait, where is here?" Akari took note of her surroundings for the first time.

Wisps of black and red smoke shifted along the bright white, curling like plumes from a cigarette smoked on a cold night. The smell of vanilla, old grass, mothballs and decayed paper fragranced the air. All around delicate whispers evaporated like puddles on a hot day.

She looked at Grandmother's face and answered her own question. "We are inside the library, inside the green tome, aren't we?"

***

Ayame found her daughter's car parked

in front of her parent's home. She ran through the foyer calling her name but Akari didn't reply. Ayame ran down Memory Lane, stopping with cold dread in front of her father's library. The words 'Carpe Librum' dripped blood and twisted in the wood above the door.

"Akari, where are you? Are you here?" Ayame was terrified.

She stepped over the mess of books strewn around the entrance and screamed in alarm as a thick green book was flung sideways, and forcibly pushed her to the other side of the library. Ayame shivered in ice cold fear as a demonic voice whispered... _"Seize the book!"_

# The Back Door

### Cathy Pace Matthews

### The Back Door

He slipped through the darkness hiding from the sentinel. He needed to set so many free. They were kept behind locked doors and he wanted to release all of them so they could in return, release their darkness on the world. Not only was his whole existence dedicated to causing chaos he had been born to wreak havoc on the world. His creator had given birth to him for no other reason. He probably should call her mother, after all she did give birth to him, but he couldn't. He hated her as much as he hated the rest of the world. It was she who had locked him away. She had thought she could control him after she had given him life.

He thought parents were supposed to support their offspring in their endeavors but instead his mother had at first tried to suppress him, only allowing him to come out when it suited her. When he had wanted to do more she had cut him off completely from the world

***

Monica sat by the window trying to remember the idea that had come to her in the middle of dinner last night. She had only been carrying a small evening bag which resulted in her being forced to leave her notebook at home. She had started to pull out her phone to type her idea into her note app but her friend, Al, had laid a hand over hers to keep her from doing so. She had tried to get him to understand but he had been adamant about her appearing rude.

She hadn't wanted to go to that damn function to begin with. Now she couldn't remember the idea and she had been spending the past several hours trying to remember what it had been about. She couldn't understand why it was that the idea for the story had slipped from her mind, she was now unable to remember it. She remembered that the main character was supposed to be a female but that was all she had managed to get back so far. Damn this was frustrating she thought.

Monica had found she was losing more and more of the ideas she had of late. She couldn't understand why she didn't seem to be able to hold on to her thoughts and ideas lately. She had even gone to the doctor to be tested for Alzheimer but the test hadn't shown that she had any signs of the disorder. She now carried her notepad with her everywhere she went. Well except for last night anyway.

Monica got up from the chair she had been sitting in and went to the kitchen to get her something to drink. As she was coming back to her office her phone rang. She looked to see who was calling and when she saw it was Al she decided not to answer it. The call finally went to voice mail but she even ignored that, before she could count to twenty her phone was ringing again, Al again, which was no surprise.

"Hell, what does he want?" Monica asked no one in the empty rooms that was her house.

"Hello." Monica really didn't want to talk to Al right now. She was mad at him.

"Hey Monica." Al knew Monica was pissed at him but her pulling out that damn pad in the middle of dinner last night wouldn't have been cool. Al hadn't told her that the dinner last night was extremely important to him. His business was about to take off in a new direction that would mean mega millions if not billions of dollars. The people they were sitting with could be very important to the success of his company in the coming months.

"What do you want asshole?" Yes Monica was mad at Al. They had been friends a long time and they often used one another for the plus one thing. She had never felt used before, however last night she had. Not to mention losing that damn thought on a new story line which hadn't helped the situation any. She had been losing too many lately and because of that the stories were becoming harder and harder to pin down.

"Look Monica I'm sorry about last night, I really am. I should have told you how important that dinner was to me but I was afraid if I told you it would have scared you into not coming with me. I needed you. You're the only woman I know who can handle little get-togethers like that and I wanted you by my side." Al wanted to tell her a lot more but he knew if he did she would run for the hills. He was in love with Monica and had been for a long time. He just wished he felt like there was some hope of her returning the feelings but he wasn't holding his breath.

"Al you know I've been having trouble with the whole remembering things lately and I really wanted to jot what popped in my head at that moment, now it's gone. I wish you could understand how important my writing is to me." Monica knew she wouldn't stay mad at Al for long but right now she was and she was going to savor it for as long as possible.

"I do understand Monica." Al understood alright. It was the reason why she didn't have time for things like getting involved with anyone. All she studied was her writing.

It was at that moment that Monica thought of something she wanted to jot down.

"Sorry Al, got to go." Monica didn't wait for the man on the other end of the conversation to respond but quickly hung up the phone and grabbed her note pad. She quickly jotted down the idea before returning to her laptop she continued the story she had been working on before the phone rang.

***

The Sentinel had done it again. She had managed to lock away the new arrival before he could get her and set her free. He could hear her in her cage screaming to be released. Her high pitch squeals of anger and anguish echoing throughout the dark recesses of the pitch black pit they were all brought too then secured from the world in order to secure the world from them. The sentinel never gave another thought to what was being locked up down here after they were locked away unless they were needed. Oh if the sentinel thought one of the prisoners could help with a project then that one would be pulled out and used then again locked away afterwards. Sometimes they never saw the light of day again or even the darkness of night which is when most liked to carry out their horrific deeds.

He had carried out many missions for the Sentinel but one day he had been locked away and forgotten. He had sat in his cell waiting to be released but the sentinel never came for him again. Once however the Sentinel had come close but had remembered something while unlocking the door to his cage she had been distracted forgetting all about him. He had managed to slip from his confines but instead of using the back door he discovered he vowed to stay and release all he could before he was either recaptured or he decided to step out into the world to do as he pleased. He knew that day was fast approaching and he was releasing all he could before that day came. Off in the distance he again heard the screams of the new arrival. He thought about going to her then decided against it. It might draw attention to him which very well result in him being detected locked away again and he didn't want that to happen. No it was best for him to lie low staying in the background for now. His time was coming one way or the other but when it did he planned on taking the Sentinel down. He knew the Sentinel held the power of life and death over him and all who were locked away here. No the Sentinel had to die and he was going to be the one to do the killing.

***

Monica continued to write late into the evening. She had turned her phone off after she had gotten off of it with Al and now she had managed to complete an entire chapter. For the first time in weeks she felt good about the book she was working on. Without any distractions she had accomplished a lot. She realized her stomach was calling to her and she knew she needed to take a break.

Monica turned her phone on again and saw that there were three missed calls from Al. Damn she thought, she really wasn't mad at him anymore. She had worked through the mad time and now all she could think about was calling the man back to apologize for her earlier behavior. Damn she hated the roller coaster ride that seemed to be her life caused by her emotions these days.

***

Again he slipped through the dark making a point of not going near the new prisoner. She had quieted down a bit but every now and then you could hear her let out a wail of rage and frustration. He understood her anger. He had felt it so many times in the past. She wasn't the only one who was locked away although the numbers had been slowly dwindling down thanks to him. He relished the bits of news he got throughout the network. The crime rate was on the rise in the city. Most had been horrific murders and they were even beginning to talk about a serial killer, maybe two, that were lose on the town. If they only knew. Yes the crime rate was going up and if he had anything to do about it there would be even more.

Moving quietly through the dark he reached the cage he had been wanting to open for a while. This one was even worse than him. This one was the worst of the worst. This one even scared him a bit. She had been locked away even longer than he had been. He stopped to think about what he was about to do and wondered if even he would release something like this one on the world outside. A smile crossed his lips as he thought yes, yes he wanted this one out there. He wanted to see what it could do and maybe, just maybe, this one would be the last one before he made his final move.

Inserting the makeshift key into the lock he turned it. He didn't expect what came next. This one was different. He knew she had been here when the Sentinel had given birth to him but he couldn't find anything anywhere that had shown she had ever used this one. This one she had simply taken and locked up after her birth. Something about this one had scared even the Sentinel. Now he knew why. He felt the rush of cold that ran through the darkened hallways and he lost all sense of himself. He felt the energy slip from his being as things became even darker than they were. He had been wrong. It hadn't been the Sentinel that had been responsible for the ones who had been held here. It was this one. This had been the creator and the Sentinel had been locking away the creations of this one. This was where it all had begun. The root of all their evil. He let out a roar of pain as the last vestiges of existence left him before everything went completely dark for him forever. He was no more

***

Monica screamed as the sudden pain went digging through her brain. She was unable to remain on her feet and fell to her knees. Grabbing both sides of her head she tried to push in the sides of her skull trying to alleviate the pain. Several veins must have exploded in her eyes because blood began to run out the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks. A small trickle of blood even wove its way out of one of her ears and glided down the soft white flesh of her neck.

***

Al turned the knob to Monica's door. She had finally called him back and asked him to come over. She said she had something to talk to him about and she wanted to make up for the way she had acted earlier. She had told him to come on in when he got here and make himself comfortable because she might still be in the shower when he got here. She had even told him she had a surprise for him.

Poor Al. If only he had known that yes, she did have a surprise for him. She had never bothered with a bath or a shower or anything that had to do with cleaning up. She sat in a chair in the dark waiting for him. The blood from earlier that day dried and caked on her skin. Yes she had a surprise. She had been locked away for far too long and now she was ready to get down to business. The evil that was her had been locked away too long, the evil that Monica had tried to keep hidden from the outside world, the evil that was and always had been, Monica.

# The Well

### J. A. Kyser

### The Well

I could feel it coming. My happiness was dimming. It was getting harder to face each new day. Just a few weeks before I had been confident and happy. Figuring out solutions to paying bills, or other domestic problems was my forte. Everything would work out. It always did. After years of suffering, luck had finally looked my way. A wonderful husband who lived to make me happy. Two daughters that anyone would be proud of. They had worked very hard and were now living the middle class dream. My parents would have been so proud. They had been proud when we were poor and struggled just to keep the utilities on.

When the washer broke we did laundry on a washboard in an old claw foot tub. We never gave up; we worked through it. My girls learned by example to never give up. Because I was strong, my family didn't worry about me getting back on my feet. They knew all our hardships would only make us stronger and more determined. Mom and dad helped when they could, but they didn't have much themselves. Back then I was strong in so many ways. Two daughters raised on my own. There wasn't any time to be depressed. I'm rich now, rich in family and love and pride. Like my own secret fairytale come true.

Finally, medication seemed a good idea. After 25 years of dealing with it on my own, hiding it from others, there was real help. Not the stuff that made me act like a zombie or the medication that seemed to take away all emotions. This time my promise was kept, every day the pills went down. So why did I start feeling like this again? Those damn little voices came back. Taking little bites out of my confidence. Telling me what a failure I was. Reminding me how nothing I started ever seemed to get finished. Bubble headed, meaningless, couldn't work or pull my weight in chores or bills any longer. Those damn voices, always there, always finding fault with me. Shaming me, ridiculing me, making me feel worthless. I cry over the smallest thing. I accuse others of talking about me behind my back because if I think I'm inferior, they must see me as even worse.

As my mind starts to feel the slip of time, the harder it is to be everyone's rock. I am the one people come to when they have a problem. I am the one who can almost always find an answer. But not now. A person can't be strong for others when all they feel is self-doubt. The medication has been working excellently for the last few years, making me feel myself again. Why was it faltering after all this time?

I guess the storms that have been going on in my head for all these years has knocked down some fences. The fences had been some protection against the voices and the mind-storms. Oh God! The raging storms. How wicked they are. Overwhelming my brain. Like a tornado picking up bits and pieces, every thought in my brain goes around and around; before I can even comprehend what it is, the next one is flying by. When every thought has completed its round, the maelstrom commences again. It goes on for hours during which time I cannot complete an original thought; it leaves me helpless to even do the most basic routines. During these mind-storms I feel paralyzed.

Separating myself from the outside world begins. Avoiding contact with people. I am so scared of doing or saying the wrong thing, small talk with anyone ends. No more errands; even if it means going without something really wanted or needed. Visiting family and friends stops. There is always a good excuse why today is just a bad day for me. Seeing the look of pity in others eyes when they look at me, shames me. Clean clothes, showers even food is not important. Always sleeping or in the bathroom when someone calls or knocks on the door. A part of me knows what is happening and just can't let anyone see me so pathetic. This woman who knows all the answers and can fix anything, this rock that cannot break.

At some point I can no longer tolerate anyone in the same room with me, if they touch me, even in a placating manner, I will come unglued. When finally that time arrives, all that fills my head is to run; run as far as possible where no one can find me. Not just run, but escape a world that no longer makes any sense; escape the confusion and fear in my mind. My mind is like a single circuit breaker in a home, at some point the breaker cannot take even one more tiny little surge. Then someone plugs in their phone charger. Poof! All the power goes out in the whole house. This is what happens to my brain. One more tiny thought is put into my brain by someone and Poof! My circuit breaker blows, all my lights wink out. I am catatonic. Unlike the circuit breaker, I don't have a switch to flip that will turn everything back on.

The circuit has blown, the house is black. In my terror my feet trip me up. Half crawling in the direction the last light was seen, my hand comes down, not on solid ground. Air, nothing but air. My balance is gone and I go the way of my hand and arm, down, down. Is there a bottom? The fall seems to take minutes. From this height, something will definitely be broken, my spirit maybe? No, that was broken long ago.

I know this place, I've been here before. Like a well, so deep you can see just a pin prick of light. Dirt walls that I have dug in and climbed out by myself when young and strong. Later in life help had come from others that understood what is really needed. This time I had run. No one knew where to look, let alone find me. Trying to get out on my own, I can't make any headway. The dirt is so soft, I can't get a firm handhold. It just falls back on me, piling up around my feet, then my legs, getting deeper; till I am frightened of being buried alive. Of course the voices are right here with me. Admonishing me, telling me what a loser I was, that even a child could do better. Not even enough of a woman to keep hold of the wonderful life that had finally come to me. Something new was added to their little tirade this time that truly frightens me. The voices said we would have plenty of time for games and chit chat. I shudder in fear imagining what they mean.

I used to joke and call them my demons, never guessing how close to the truth I was. The thought never entered my mind that they were true entities. It was just my subconscious being mutinous against me. Now the joke was on me. They were demons that now had me at a disadvantage. This was their home field and I had no idea what they could do to me. Here they are demons. The thought came to me that they cannot actually kill me. They were like parasites, feeding off me. They needed me. They can and do torment me any way that pleases them. Now the demons can take their natural form. Down here they don't have to hide any longer. They take joy in teasing and taunting me. Actually, I think they feed on it. They have been getting bigger and more horrific as time goes by.

How much time has passed since I descended down the rabbit hole, hours, days, years? They don't seem to be able to see anything although their hearing is quite good. When I first arrived it was pitch black. The only reason there is light now is for my benefit. Not to help me get about easier, so these "things" can show me how terrifying they are. They terrify me with just a glimpse of their evil silhouettes.

Shhhh, scrunch up against the wall. Did you see it? The little girl? First time it came to me I thought "Oh what a lovely child. How could they put a little girl in this hell?" She was so beautiful with her long, black shining hair. There was a sweet little lace bow pinned in the back of her hair, she had the prettiest white satin and lace dress on.

She was sitting on her knees and had her back to me. Her shoulders were trembling from her mournful sobbing. Her small delicate hands were covering her face. Dropping to my knees and putting my arm around her, I spoke very softly so as not to frighten her.

"How did you get here, honey? Do you know how to get out? Aww let me wipe your tears and we can find a place to sit so you can tell me your story." She dropped her hands and turned to face me. I shrieked and fell backwards.

Things around me started going dark, just like when I fell down the well, my mind was starting to shut down. Fighting it off, my mind cleared. It was such a horrible sight and to be a child; that is my biggest weakness. The monsters knew all my innermost thoughts and fears. They had always been there, just waiting for their chance.

Her face was like old leather, stretched taut. There were two small slits where her nose had once been. Her mouth was in the shape of an O and would be forever. Her lips and tongue were gone although a few straggly rotten teeth were still there. She still smelled of formaldehyde although there was a fetid stench underneath coming from that horrid mouth. By far the sight that almost made me faint were her eyes. Huge, gaping black vacuums that gave the feeling of having no bottom. If you look into them too long, I swear they would suck you right in.

Finally I was able to stand and she held her arms up for me to take her into mine. I almost did because she was just a child, it tore at my heart to see a child used in any way, let alone this! My heart and mind were so glad I had hesitated just a moment. Just as I was about to reach for her, she jumped to her feet in one swift move, growled at me and ran off.

There are so many shocking things down here. Demons in shapes that you could not imagine in your darkest nightmares. One certain demon comes to me quite often. Mostly skeletal with a thin layer of papery skin covering it. The head is elongated, somewhat like a large dog and it still has all its teeth. The teeth are very long and look to be very sharp, they stick straight out from the jaw instead of perpendicular. I haven't had the pleasure of finding out exactly how sharp, not yet anyway.

Some of the bones look almost human. It walks on all six appendages, yes, I said six. There are two sets of arms and one set of legs. It will sneak up and latch onto me around my waist with its legs. Without muscle or sinew you wouldn't think it could keep a hold on a full grown adult, but it's extremely strong. It practically locks me to the spot, which is good. I have learned not to fight or even move when it grabs me. The bottom arms come out to the side with palms facing inward like ours but slightly lower. It somehow locks its' elbows to its' knees for good control. Then it grasps my head around my ears with both those cold, skeletal hands.

It takes a moment to position my head just right and then it squeezes. The pain is fierce where the joints push against my skull. Its' second set of hands, just thinking of them makes me want to cry. The shoulders are a bit higher and are better suited to come straight down instead of sideways as the other set. The fingers on these hands are very long and delicate. They taper down to about the size of a needle they use to get blood samples.

Oh the accursed thing! What it does to me! It will stroke my head softly and push in spots with a knuckle, like looking for a soft spot on a ripe melon. Sometimes he starts drooling like I'm a juicy steak in front of him. I can feel it drip on my head. He then takes those five fingers on each hand and finds the spot he wants. He pushes hard to get them through my skull, once through he touches a different part of my brain with each finger. He doesn't just touch it, he plucks it like he is playing a soft melody on a guitar. He gets a rhythm and sometimes it lasts for hours while others, just a few minutes. I have never felt pain like that, ever in my life.

The worst is when he actually forces those tips through the solid bone of my skull. When he is playing, which is how I have come to think of it, it's not an intense pain. Like a pinch and then an electric shock. Not as intense but it lasts for so long. He has never left any permanent damage, which I know of anyway, but it causes muscle spasms and cramps for hours after he is finished; sometimes it seems like it will never stop hurting. I swear that horrid.

The ugly thing gets turned on by the pain I feel. It has no sex organs, but it feels like I am being sexually violated. In all my years, I never wanted to die, just to get away. I almost wish for death now.

Of all the horrible, painful and just plain sick things they do to me, do you know the cruelest act they inflict on me? They give me hope. They let me think maybe, one day my mind will clear enough to remember the way out. That someday my husband and family will stand before me again, tell me how much they love me, how much they need me. That maybe someone will find me and help me escape from this hell that has locked me in my mind, making me feel impotent. Just when I think it might happen, those hateful creatures laugh and cavort around, letting me know it was just another joke. I suppose I should have tried harder to stay before I let them get this far.

Shush! Quiet! Don't let them hear you....I whisper to my shadow on the wall.

# Someone in the Shadows

### Patricia Knight

### Someone in the Shadows

The first time was clumsy; the first time he was almost seen. He knew they would pick it up. He knew they would be curious. Of course they would be. It looked just like what they needed. But it wasn't.

His first batch was good, but noisy. He didn't like the noise. He liked the pain. He liked watching them grab at their throats first and their eyes bulge. Then they clawed at their arms, but it was too late.

He kept notes in his head until he got back to his dingy apartment. Then he scribbled them down, looking at the common factors. What caused the screams? What could he replace it with? How could he prolong their agony? While he thought he whipped up a batch of clean, strong stuff. It's what kept them coming to him. His was the best.

But one syringe out of the batch would be different. Special.

He rolled the problem around in his head while he cooked.

Sitting in an old chair that smelled of baby powder and dust was a small, frail elderly woman. Her cheeks were sunk in, eyes glazed over from cataracts. She could not see the images on the television but her ears heard everything.

He kissed her forehead and put the food tray on the small folding table.

"Dinner."

"What is it?"

"Tuna casserole."

She felt for her spoon. It was to the right of the bowl, as always. She took a bite, unaware that food dribbled down the bib she was wearing.

He sat down on the equally old couch and turned off the news. He did not care that another of his victims had been found. There wouldn't be another from him until he had figured out how to get rid of the noise.

Later he helped her to bed and stood in the doorway watching as her thin chest barely moved the covers. Last week the doctor told him she did not have long to wait. At ninety-seven she had waited long enough. Tomorrow she would be ninety-eight. He did not need to look at the pictures on the wall to know how much she had lived. It wasn't life that fascinated him. It was death.

The next morning, he helped her to the bathroom and fixed breakfast while she took her morning shower. He heard the curtain move and then the chair. While she 'got decent', he poured her bowl of oatmeal, three teaspoons of sugar, and the half cup of whole milk that she liked. He put a thick layer of butter on the single piece of wheat toast and poured a cup of strong black coffee. To her oatmeal he added the first of her surprises for the day, a small handful of blueberries.

He had laid out a new dress for her on her bed. He smiled when she wore it into the living room.

"Is this a new dress?" She asked.

"It is."

"What color is it?"

"Yellow with red and purple flowers on it."

Her wrinkled face broke into a brilliant smile. One that took years and worries off of her face.

"And you look beautiful in it." He added.

"Thank you."

"After breakfast I have another surprise for you."

She sat down in her chair, "Oh?"

"Today we are going to the park. There will be an orchestra there playing music. I thought you might like a day out. And for lunch, I thought we would eat hot dogs or hamburgers near the fountain. I also got some birdseed yesterday so you can feed the pigeons."

"You're spoiling me," she sniffled as a tear rolled down her thin cheek.

He smiled, "You're worth it." It's your last birthday, might as well make it a good one.

That night her breathing was even shallower. He put his notes to the side and sat in the chair near her bed. He opened the window, as she begged softly in her sleep. Moments later he saw the last breath leave her body. He pulled out his phone and called the doctor. An hour later the funeral home arrived to take her away.

He worked through the night, looking at combinations that would give him the agony he wanted but the silence too. He made eight new combinations, one in its own syringe.

After the funeral he tried out the first one. The door slammed behind him when he got home. He tore up the page and burnt it. The idiot had screamed so much the cops had nearly caught him. It would be almost a week before he would dare try the second syringe.

It was better. Lots of agony, not as much screaming, but the stench was unbelievable. The muscles went flaccid, all of them. As the person convulsed urine and feces ran down their legs and gathered in a fetid pool at his victim's feet. Then the person fell, landing in the excrement and as they flailed about little bits flew all over the alley.

Four, five, six, and seven were failures as well. Not noisy, but not near enough agony. Syringe eight seemed to wink at him as he picked it up and put it in his inside jacket pocket. In a different pocket were the clean ones, the ones that made him his money.

Tonight's victim was a tall, lanky man who stank of beer and piss. He knew him as one of his regulars, one that frequently begged for a free score. He was tired of the begging and winked at the older man. It was the cue that he would give him something free, when others weren't around.

He followed silently, watching. His heart was beating fast inside his ribs. He could almost dance to the rhythm.

The man sat with his back to him, his preferred arm pressed against the brick wall of the building he squatted in. His sigh was barely audible. Then the agony began.

His sweet agony.

Ghost Walk

### Gary Jefferies

Ghost Walk

Jake walked on. It was close to midnight and a Hunter's Moon hung on the horizon. An enormous cyclopean eye, casting an orange hued gaze over the ancient road he trod. Long buried beneath the passage of time, linking two deceased waypoints on an even longer trail to places lost in antiquity.

Trees lined parts of the route, some already dropping autumnal foliage to add to the layers; bedding the ancient thoroughfare into a deepening tomb. They added atmosphere. Part skeletal branches, silhouetted by the all Seeing Eye, moving in the wind waiting to snag an unwary soul and pull them under the earths to lie with those that, in another time, marched this route.

But, to what? A town or maybe a battle; perhaps one that silenced this road forever. Jake reasoned somewhere back in time someone must have walked the same path on the stone causeway that now lay interred by the overgrowth and worm turn of centuries; and, that at some point, someone also did it for the very last time.

He watched mist beginning to overlay neighboring  fields and scale mounds, or interrupted hedgerows that delineated his path; the battle wraiths returning to the road to make the long journey home. He shuddered, maybe a nocturnal adventure was not such a good idea. All he could think of now was the last march on the subterranean stones. The noise of feet striking the ground, the clatter of armor or sheathed swords and the banter of warriors, as they moved ever onwards. He could even smell the sweat of men baking under a searing sun, and the unsung anthem _march on for inglorious death awaits_. Hairs sprang up on the back of his neck. The wraith mist curled around his feet and the Cyclops looked on.

A sound broke his reverie and he paused to listen deeper. Nothing stirred, save the wind stroking the leaves of a nearby oak that stood proudly, overseeing this stretch of road. Some of its summer clothes fell into the mist. Across the fields to the left a fox barked from beneath the fog screen. Settled, Jake began moving once more.

_There it is again_ , he thought, but closer.

This time he was sure. Footsteps, he could hear footsteps behind him. Old ones, for the footfall on today's grassy terrain would not resonate the same. He slowed down, expecting whatever was behind to carry on. Disturbingly, it matched his pace and even ceased as he came to a standstill, taking stock. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. The urge to look back grew, but his eyes rested firmly on the mist ahead.

Unconsciously, his fingers flexed, curled into fists and opened again; his palms moist despite the cool night air. Inside adrenaline flowed. Ghosts and wraiths washed over the landscape; the Eye laughing at him under a cloudless sky. Jake set off again and the sound behind followed, twinning him stride for stride. He panicked and whirled round, ready to take flight. Mist greeted his eyes, along with an empty bygone thoroughfare. He walked forwards.

"Is anybody there?"

An owl hooted from the guardian oak just passed. In front of him emptiness stretched back into the mist, illuminated by moon glow and shadow. His own exhaled breath, chilled in the night air, added to the fog. In the distance a farmhouse light twinkled like some lighthouse beacon surrounded by sea fog.

_What is it warning of?_ Jake's mind was questioning.

He took five paces forwards, and behind five steps followed. This time it took several minutes to swallow the lump in his throat and try to wrest control of a heart that was beating way too fast and loud. He could feel it in his ears. Somehow he knew turning was irrelevant. All that would greet his eyes would be the misty relic of road, extending ever onwards betwixt the parallel boundary hedgerows defining its route. Fear crawled upwards from his stomach and sharpened his mind. The night was awake in his head. The fox barked again, and another answered. He could smell the moist earth and see the skeletal branches ominously reaching out. Sounds beyond the fox lay dead under the blanket of ground fog. Even the lighthouse beacon blinked out, suffocated by the mist.

He turned nevertheless. The road was as he envisaged. Jake guessed he had less than a mile left before reaching his goal. At the end would be the Royal Oak Coach House and Stables, a room until morning and, perhaps, something warm to eat, and an ale. The doors, he was told, never shut by day or by night; lying in wait, as it did, on a cross roads for weary travelers.

He continued on his former route for several minutes, before his heart banged louder as the footsteps returned. This time they were closer; he began to run. For a time space grew between the unseen follower and running man. His breath became labored and ragged. Looking over his shoulder was the mistake a skeleton tree was waiting for. Out of the mist a branch reared and Jake's temple ran square into it. Dazed he fell under the fog blanket and onto moist wet grass. The stone footsteps ran nearer, out of synchronization; as if knowing he was downed.

Groggy, he stood up and felt a sharp impact on his back. Shocked, he looked down and his eyes greeted the front end of a blade. He tried to draw breath, but heard only gurgling as blood filled what remained of his lungs. In his eyes the fog in front grew deeper and deeper, joining the mist in his eyes until all was one, and another light went out in the darkness.

_Déjà vu_ , was his very last thought.

***

Across the field, on the right, Allan and Joseph Carmichael looked at each other in wide eyed amazement. They sat in a purpose built cabin, on a track that led to the rear grounds of the Royal Oak. Locally, it was called the ghost walk, and something the publican had tapped into after the bizarre incident of manifesting Victorian letters; personally addressed to one of his patrons. A few choice press releases and the 'paranormals' had, more or less, set up in residence.

"Al, did you just see that?"

"Are you referring to the spectral chap that just got murdered on the old road down below, or the barking fox that just legged it toward the river from whence this accursed mist originates?"

Allan rolled his eyes. "The fox obviously."

"Ah, then no, I was fixed upon the transpiring murderous activity and villainy we came here to witness."

Their tones were quiet, disguising the fact that both were deathly white and somewhat rattled by the events that ended the days of the traveler who, unknown to them, had been called Jake.

Joseph put a trembling hand on his brother's shoulder.

"You were right Al, the Hunter's Moon at this time of year is clearly the key."

He was remembering the research that first gave them the name of the Oak. A very long standing ale house stretching far back in time where it served as a waypoint for horses and travelers alike. Tales of a lonely traveler, murdered one night on his way down this very road. Once a year he was to be seen wandering the old right of way, trying to identify his killer; reliving the journey under the watchful gaze of the orange Eye.

It was Allan that had linked dates and descriptions leading to this very eve, when the Hunter's Moon grew full, casting its gaze straight down onto what  remained of an ancient highway.

The paranormal brothers were staring at blinking lights on two recording cameras; one capturing the visible spectrum, one not. It was the latter that held their attention. Allan broke the silence

"Do you think it recorded anything?"

"Given our usual good fortune, I strongly suspect it holds evidence of the nocturnal wanderings of a fox, and not the events that transpired on the dead road."

Allan noted the choice of words; _dead road in more ways than one Jo._

Overhead, the cyclops looked on; as it did every year, watching Jake take the last ever walk on a road that fell into disuse centuries before the paranormal brothers found life.

# Bargains

### Amber C. Carlyle

### Bargains

The sweet scent of sulfur and copper mingling as one filled my nose. The abyss robbed me of such sensations for far too long. Time meant nothing here, more a human concept to try and trap eternity. I found no need for such things; yet, I craved morsels that only these flesh mongers offered. I cast my gaze out towards the pulling sensation of a summoning, beyond the veil between the worlds.

Imprisonment sapped my strength, and my sight brought the fuzzy outline of a prostrated figure before my sigils into view. Rudimentary offerings of blood and flesh teased me while the clumsy muttering of the incantation rooted my consciousness. The slightest tingle of power danced in the background. It was a crude ritual, but it served for now.

As my essence surged in the mortal realm, fear rolled through the room, causing my mouth to water. I forgot how tasty the mortal emotions could be. The puny creature chittered, stumbling over its own language. Its words were irrelevant to my kind. Whatever it requested, it mattered not. I cared for only what I gained in return.

Fear turned to terror, overwhelming the quivering flesh bag and causing it to lose its tongue and what little courage it possessed. Boredom and anger swirled through me, and I pooled the vestiges of power the paltry gifts bestowed into my very essence. It was not much, but it would suffice. I focused upon the creature, leveling my will on its. I recalled the endless stillness of limbo, and allowed it to flow from me into the mortal. The terror seeped from the room as the human babbled once more.

Images flickered through my mind's eye, of another human, but my will focused on the offering of meat, glistening with red. It tempted me to push my mind further onto the supplicant, to force this creature to engorge itself on the flesh. I envisioned it guzzling down the blood, choking it down as the viscous fluid trailed down its chin. I held back, not wanting to waste my chance though. It was far more delicious when they abided my whims of their own accords. The tug of something disgustingly pure drew my attention back to the flood of images, shimmering with a euphoric essence and tainted by the covetous intent of the mewling wretch before me. Even I was not able to refute the pull of such purity. I yearned for my corporeal body, in order to feast upon such things.

I tapped on the door of its consciousness, promising a multitude of things relevant to its pathetic desires. The more I showed, the more excitement blossomed within it, pulsing through the room as the creature squirmed before me.

The human hesitated, and I felt the pushback against my will as it tried to free itself. I continued to channel the void of the abyss from me, to force a calm through the room. I worried that I played my hand too soon, and I needed to take care to not scare this one away. I knew not when another opportunity would arise.

I begged a simple favor, to just be free and to hide away.

I waited for the answer. I was good at waiting, even when greed and hunger gnawed within me. My imprisonment taught me that patience was useful. The worries and concerns of the mortal whipped about me. It thought it knew the risk and true weight of what I asked, but it doubted me still. A malicious grin spread across my visage, and I teased it with images of what my power could grant – of the sweet fulfillment of its darkest desires.

Hesitation fled, and it spoke the binding words needed to free me from my prison through my assistance. As soon as the words left the supplicant's mouth, my essence fused with its mind, and I nestled myself deep within the recesses. It would take some time to get used to this vessel, and its primitive needs, but, as I said, I was patient. Besides, I'd rather twist this one's desire to my own designs. As our minds synched on the same plane, its senses sharpened, heightening – the sulfur and copper becoming more pungent. A wave of nausea rode through the mortal shell, and it fled to another room, purging itself of its stomach's contents.

Cool water splashed across its face moments later, and then, I saw the change had begun as my red eye stared back at me in the mirror.

# Covered Mirrors

### S. J. Lucas

Covered Mirrors

The stark trees stood like charcoal pencils with pointy branches piercing a darkening sky. Rust and pumpkin colored mulch carpeted the frosty ground, while a chilly breeze set the campfire dancing. The road from town to the campsite had become less forgiving as the miles blurred by. Tarred roads gave way to roughened terrain, potholed and muddy, and as thick as congealed beef stew. Needless to say, arriving at their destination came as a welcome relief for Wesley and his group. It had taken a little over an hour for them to set up their tents in a semicircle and get a fire roaring.

"You okay, bro?" Asked Chris.

"Yeah, just tired, I think I'll sleep well tonight."

Tina flipped her ebony hair over her shoulder. "You can't bail on us till after the traditional ghost stories! It isn't camping unless there are roasted marshmallows and spooky tales, you know."

"Come on, Tina, we aren't kids anymore, and besides, I'm tired. It was a long drive up here and you guys didn't exactly choose the right season for it either. Who goes camping in autumn?" Wes said.

"Apparently we do, and you do too. I know you're tired, but you have to eat anyway, and it's almost dark. We might as well make the best of it so that the trip isn't a waste."

"Give the man a break, sheesh!" Shantell said, and chuckled.

"Yeah okay, let me get a caffeine fix and have a smoke. I'll join you guys in a little while," said Wes.

His boots crunched underfoot as he made his way into the tree line. The snapping twigs and distant bird calls echoed around the woods like nature's own surround sound. Wes sighed in relief while he emptied his bladder against a rotting tree; his urine steaming a little as it hit the moss growing at the base. His breath puffed in a mixture of nicotine and condensation as he sucked on his cigarette, the coal glowing like an angry eye in the descending night. Wes pulled his jacket tighter around him and blew on his fingers to ease the chill. There was nothing interesting in the copse, so he resigned himself to return to camp just as a distant rumble of thunder rolled across the hills.

_Great, not only is it cold, but now we're in for some funky weather too._ Wes quickened his steps when he heard his name being called and accepted a cup of strong coffee on his arrival back at camp. Most of the setup had already been completed, and everyone performed various duties around the camp.

"Chris and Craig set up the beach gazebo over the tents and fire. So if it does rain at least we have some sort of cover," said Tina. "Shantell has set up the camping chairs and has already got dinner started."

"Okay cool, that's not a bad idea," he said, sipping his brew. The coffee was full bodied and he made appreciative noises enjoying the punch-in-a-mug. His stomach grumbled in anticipation at the mention of 'dinner'.

His stomach was not disappointed. His sister-in-law's barbeque ribs, jacket potatoes, foot long garlic and cheese loaf, and traditional steaks went down like a dream. The food did wonders to improve his grouchy mood, and he sat back to enjoy a post-dinner cigarette.

Tina and Chris roasted marshmallows over the flames. Craig was disposing the paper plates, and Shantell wiped the smoke from her face using a wet towelette and a hand mirror.

"Who gets first dibs on flashlight duty?" Tina asked from her seat next to Chris.

"Let Craig go first," Chris said.

"No, let Tina go first," suggested Wes.

"Wes knows great ghost stories. Remember the one that you told me when we were living on the plot? The one about the lightning and mirrors?" Said Craig.

Tina and Chris snuggled closer together, and Shantell placed her mirror and towelette on the nearby stump then took her seat close to the fire. Their anticipation was palpable, and Wes grinned slyly.

"Oh, yeah, I remember. Okay, give me the flashlight and I'll tell it," Wes said.

The ominous bass of thunder boomed a little closer, the soft pitter-patter of rain drummed on the gazebo, and an electric flash of lightning illuminated the campsite in a shocking blue. Wes placed the torch under his chin, the yellow vee accentuating his nostrils and eyes as black as pitch. In a gravelly baritone he let the story unfold...

***

"Our great-grandmother lived in a large farmhouse on a secluded plot of land just off of Pomona Road in Kempton Park. She was an assiduous woman, diligent, with a face as tough as leather, and a backbone made of steel. Her jams, chutneys, marmalades and preserves were famous throughout the area. The ingredients were fresh and homegrown in the orchard on the plot. Rhubarb, fig, strawberry, orange, you name it, Great-granny Tink made it."

"Great- granny Tink?" Asked Tina. "Why was she known as Great-granny Tink?"

"Tink was the nickname the farm workers and neighbors had given her because she wore a tiny bell around her wrist. Great-granny could not shout, so she would tinkle the bell to let people know of her location, and to call in the children and the dogs for meal times, or to retire."

"What was her real name?" Asked Tina.

"Does it even matter? Shush now and let me continue, please," said Wes, and cleared his throat.

The camp members all made shushing noises and Tina settled down. Another rumble of thunder vibrated through the woods, followed by a quick flash of lightning that briefly lit the wicked grin on Wesley's face as he continued...

"Great-granny would rise before the sun, and retire when the kitchen candle burned low. Her days were spent maintaining the farm and surrounds with the workers and single-handedly raising her children, because great-granddad had died early on in their marriage. The workers and her children all loved her, for she was as kind and fair as she was strict. Great-gran Tink, who was a pious woman, took her church and Bible seriously. She would hold prayer meetings every Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon, and did not take kindly to fairy stories, nor tolerated folklore or old wives' tales, but brushed them off as nonsense and ignored them resolutely.

"Summers in Kempton Park brought bone -dry heat, and severe thunderstorms that would tear up the late afternoons and rip through the skies like jagged teeth through plump flesh. The women of the day would rush to bring in laundry from the wash lines and scatter like headless fowl to latch windows, draw curtains, and cover mirrors."

"Why did they cover mirrors?" Tina asked, forever curious. "I've never heard of this before."

"There are endless folklores concerning mirrors, like the belief that if you are a good person and stare into a mirror, your evil reflection would stare back; for mirrors show the flipside to everything. It was also believed that if you stare too long, the looking glass will capture a piece of your soul and the piece it would capture would not be pure.

"For this reason, all the mirrors would be covered in a house where a recent death occurred. The old folk believed that the deceased's soul would not find its way to heaven, but be captured within an uncovered mirror. Therefore, any good soul captured within a mirror would ultimately end up corrupted.

"It was necessary to cover mirrors during thunderstorms, for it was believed that the captured souls would use the metal to attract lightning and use it to shatter the glass to which they were confined. This would bring seven years of bad luck to the household as these souls would haunt the occupants for that time, gathering strength to finally possess a member of the living."

The group jumped in fright as nature's bass boomed overhead, followed by a crack that tormented eardrums and set body hair on end. The tinny taste of ozone singed the atmosphere. Finally, the pregnant clouds burst and released their contents in wet sheets. This did not stop the story, and again Wesley continued.

"As I've mentioned before, none of this folklore held weight with Great-granny Tink, so when a particularly severe thunderstorm broke out one dry afternoon, it never crossed her mind to cover the mirrors while she tinkled her bell to call in the children, and warn the workers to abandon their duties and take cover indoors.

"That day the lightning struck two trees in the orchard, ripping through their bark and instantly setting them aflame. It was in these moments where the household stood on the enclosed porch, watching the rain douse the flames with an intense sizzle and pop, that a lightning bolt inexplicably struck an uncovered mirror in the hallway and shattered in a shower of glass.

"I wish I could say that supernatural phenomena immediately began, but that would be a lie..."

"Oh, come on! What kind of ghost story is this? Did something spooky happen or not?" Asked Chris.

Then: another boom of thunder, another crack of lightning, and the continuous drumming of the rain.

Wes smiled. "...it took seven years for Great-gran Tink to admit that there was something wrong with her second youngest daughter, and to admit that something inhuman had entered their home. At first things were barely noticeable, a misplaced item here, mysterious drops of blood there, then...furniture that shifted itself, banging doors, sulfuric odors and ominous susurrations from supposedly empty rooms.

"Until one day when it could no longer possibly be ignored because Aunt Sophia had become something evil. She had grabbed the panga that leaned behind the scullery door and went on a murderous rampage, decapitating family members and farm workers alike. It was said that her wails chilled the victims to the bone, her voice an ungodly growl that snapped and spat and yipped like a rabid animal.

"It took two brave farm workers to disarm her, and even then it took three more to subdue her. They said that her eyes had rolled back in her skull and bulged like those of a cod. Her skin was near translucent and her veins appeared black, showing up in stark contrast against her pale skin. Great-granny Tink had our granddad fetch the pastor from down the way, and the poor man gave his life to rid Aunt Sophia from the malevolent entity."

"Oh, that sounds frightening! So what happened then, was Aunt Sophia okay?" Asked Tina.

Again: more thunder, more blue flashes of lightning, more rain.

"Aunt Sophia was admitted to an insane asylum where she lived out her days and was buried in the family cemetery on the plot. Even today the grass doesn't grow around her grave, and flowers wilt within hours after being placed upon her headstone. Great-gran Tink threw out all the mirrors and would refuse to allow a single one on the premises. Not even in the bathroom..."

"Hey, shush, listen...can you hear that? What is that sound?" Chris said.

Each member of the group fell silent, collective chills ran through the group as the tension mounted, straining like an elastic band right before it snapped.

The tinkle was faint at first and sounded like a little bell, the kind old folk used to ring for tea. Closer it became, the louder the sound.

Louder.

Louder.

BOOM!

A crack of thunder rattled overhead, followed by a bolt of lightning that struck the hand mirror on the nearby tree stump, where Shantell had left it before. The group screamed in blind terror as glass shards shattered hither and thither, and more thunder rumbled while lightning flashed like an insane disco ball, and the rain drummed harder than any drummer at a metal concert could ever hope to achieve...

Then it was still, except for the tinkle.

Could it be a warning bell from Great-gran Tink?

Insistent.

Persistent.

The rubber band of tension snapped and the group began to scream, and scream, and scream. And Craig began to laugh at the insanity of it all.

"Calm down you apes," he said. "Look, it's just the key ring on my car keys!"

"That may be," stammered Shantell. "But who the hell is that pale woman standing behind you?"

"Ha-ha very funny, I'm not falling for that old trick!" said Craig.

He turned around and a silent scream lodged in his throat at the sight of a malevolent apparition standing behind his chair. Transparent wisps whipped around the entity, its mouth a dark hole under sightless eyes, crooked fingers elongated by blackened claws gripped firmly around Craig's neck.

This time when the tinkle came, they knew that nobody could pass it off as a keychain on a set of car keys...

# The Inheritance

### Cathy Pace Matthews

### The Inheritance

Tina sat in the car looking up at the house that stood there shrouded with the gloom and desolation that only an old abandoned house could have. Across from the house, on the other side of the drive, was an old dilapidated picket fence surrounding a small old cemetery. The monuments that dotted the enclosed area seemed to be struggling to rise out of the dirt and weeds that adorned the old graves were accentuated by the sinking earth that marked the places where the coffins rested beneath the surface. From where she sat Tina could see the freshly dug grave of her aunt. Tina would have thought that the grave of someone newly buried would be covered with flowers. Her aunt's however had only the spray of flowers that was usually laid across the coffin that was placed there during the viewings and funeral. That small spray of flowers had wilted and needed to be discarded. Tina thought it was sad that there was no other flowers that showed the care and love of the people her aunt had left behind.

Tina had been surprised when she had received word that she had inherited the place. The house with all that went with it, whatever that might be, had belonged to an aunt that Tina had never even known existed, now she had inherited her entire estate. Tina was thinking that she would have been just as happy to have been left in ignorance about the place, the money, and now that she had seen it, the old wreck of a house.

A door opened on the car that sat in front of her and the attorney that represented her deceased aunt's estate stepped from the oversized vehicle. Tina opened the door of her car and stepped out and met the man at the foot of steps that lead up to the front porch.

Tina was afraid to step up on the first rung concerned that it would give way under her sending her into some bottomless pit. She could see herself falling deeper and deeper passing glimpses of hell as she spiraled down begging to have someone reach out to stop her downward momentum. This brought images of scary evil things in the dark that would reach out to tear her apart. Great now she was scared to even enter this old creepy house.

"Ms. Newsom I think you'll find the inside in a little better shape than the outside but as is obvious the outside definitely needs a great deal of work. You of course have to live in the house six months before you can sell it which I have no doubt that is what you're considering. At least the time you have to spend here can be put to good use in having some of the repairs done. The graveyard sitting in from of the house will, I'm sure, make it a little harder to sell but a lot of people these days are drawn to things like that." Mr. Carver recited his little speech to Tina as they stepped up on the porch he slipped the key into the front door.

"Actually Mr. Carver I'm not sure what I might do with the place. I didn't even know my aunt existed until you called. I think the first thing I would like to have done is have that graveyard cleaned up. If you know of anyone who is reputable and good at that kind of thing I hope you will give me their name." Tina said over her shoulder as Mr. Carver pushed the door open and stepped aside for Tina to enter the house.

Tina looked around the foyer and had to wonder what Mr. Carver considered great shape. The room was dim and dusty looking. The banister to the stairs directly in front of them looked like it hadn't seen the business side of a dust rag in centuries. The steps themselves were as dull and in need of refinishing as much as the floor that they rose from. A shaggy warn area rug that lay on the floor in the middle of the room was questionable at best. From the looks of it you couldn't tell if it was extremely dusty or extremely worn. Thankfully there was no wallpaper present in this room but the paint on the walls had yellowed with age to that brownish grimy hue that made it hard to say what the original color might have been.

"I said it was in better shape Ms. Newsom not that it was spick and span, cleaned and polished." Mr. Carver gave Tina a knowing look.

"Why did my aunt allow the place to get like this? There was obviously enough money to hire help if she was unable to keep up with it." Tina couldn't understand why her aunt would have allowed this house to get in the shape it was now.

"Let's finish with the reading of the will Ms. Newsom then if you have any questions we can deal with them afterward." Mr. Carver turned toward a door on his right and Tina followed him.

They entered into what Tina was sure was considered the sitting room, or would it have been the drawing room? She really wasn't too sure on that point now.

"This is the drawing room." Again Mr. Carver stepped aside for Tina to proceed him.

This room did appear to be in a little better shape but not by much. Here you could tell the rugs on the floor were dusty and dirty but they hadn't been worn down to the level that the ones in the hall were. The room could still use a good cleaning, there were layers of dust on pretty much everything. Well, pretty much everything but the mantel over the fireplace. That had been recently dusted and polished. Sometime in the past month anyway.

Over the mantel was a large spotless mirror that reflected the few objects that rested on the dark wood that had been so lovingly taken care of. Resting on the shelf was a box about the size of a very small microwave. The even darker wood of the box was ornately carved with a metal framed key hole. On either side of the box were two candles with a picture framed by each set. On one side of the box resting between the candles was a picture of a women. It was an older photo and the woman in it looked to be in her twenties. On the other side of the box was also a picture but this one was of a child. Tina was taken aback when she realized that the picture was her. The picture was of her when she was about five years old. What the hell was a picture of her doing here?

"Mr. Carver how well did you know my aunt?" Tina felt there was more here than met the eye.

"Ms. Newsom I was your aunt's attorney for thirty years. I handled her legal business and can answer question you might have along those lines but if you're asking me if I knew much about her personal life I can't tell you much there. Mrs. Mason didn't share her life with many people. To my knowledge after her house keeper died two years ago she never let another person in this house except the delivery boy who bought her groceries twice a week. I was allowed in only when she needed me for something or I needed her to sign papers. She was the one who insisted that the will be read here and nowhere else." Mr. Carver was now anxious to have this over with. He would have preferred to keep the questions down to a minimum and only ones that would pertain to the will.

Tina felt the man's anxiety and became even more irritated with him. She decided his professionalism left a lot to be desired. It did concern her that this man seemed to be so ill at ease at being here.

"Mr. Carver I get the sense that you would like to put this whole thing to bed. Would you care to explain your discomfort for being in this house?" Tina felt she had every right to call the man on his behavior.

"Ms. Newson I will be honest with you. I have never liked being in this house. I have to tell you also I didn't like your aunt. Something about her always put me on edge. I'm sorry if I'm now allowing that to bleed over onto you but I would like to see the end of my service to this estate and to your aunt." Mr. Carver's unabashed response though rude was at least honest and Tina did appreciate that.

"Thank you for honestly Mr. Carver. I have never liked people who were less than able to be that straight forward. You at least understand where the person is coming from and have less of a need to watch your back. I do have to ask however what if I should need your services?"

"Ms. Newsom if you should need the services of an attorney I will have to tell you that it would be best to get someone else. My obligations to the estate ends once I have read the will and turned everything over to you. After that I am retiring and taking my butt south never to return." Mr. Carver finished his statement as he placed his brief case on the dust covered cocktail table, or whatever you called that ornate piece of wood, that ran in front of the old equally dust covered sofa.

"Well that was direct and to the point."

"Ms. Newson once I read this will you become sole beneficiary to your aunt's entire estate. Personally I would like to tell you to turn around, get back in your car, and never look back but in doing so it would tie me to this place until another relative could be found. So for my sake I would be more than satisfied to see you stay but at least I have told you what I think and can do no more." Mr. Carver pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his forehead.

"Very well Mr. Carver we can proceed but I have one more question before we do." Tina made no effort to sit down but stood her ground waiting to see what he would do now.

"Then by all means please ask your question."

"Why are you afraid of this place?" She waited to see what he would do now.

"Ms. Newsom I won't quantify that with an answer. I will only tell you I'm done with this place and everything to do with your aunt once we are finished here. I hope we can put this to bed now and I can move forward with my personal endeavors." The man wanted out of this house and even this area as soon as he could get home, grab his packed bags, then heading out to get as far away from here as possible.

"Very well Mr. Carver. At this point I want you out of here as fast as you want to leave. I have to ask though, wouldn't it be better to do this in the dining room?" Tina had always imagined you did things like the reading of a will in an office, conference room, or even at a dining room table, but not sitting on a dust covered sofa in an equally dusty old drawing room.

Tina walked over to the opposite end of the sofa and after pounding the sofa cushions a couple of time, which sent a noticeable cloud of dust into the air, she took a seat and waited for Mr. Carver to begin.

For nearly forty five minutes the man read through the will that listed all of Tina's aunt's holdings. Although it didn't make her a billionaire it did leave her with a sizable amount of money and property. Even if in six months if she couldn't sell this old white elephant of a house she would be able to board it up and move on with her life without having to worry about whether or not she had a job. Finally Mr. Carver came to end of the will.

"Ms. Newsom there have been several things in the will that seemed a little strange as you know now but this last is the strangest part of all. It involves a letter that I'm supposed to hand over to you with instructions that you are not to open it until after I have left. I have no idea what might or might not be in that letter and frankly don't care. Having given you the letter I have finished my obligations to the estate and will take my leave of you. I do sincerely wish you all the best." Quickly putting his things back in his briefcase Mr. Carver got up to leave.

"If I should have any questions for you Mr. Carver?" Hell, Tina had a thousand questions.

"There is also a list of things in the folder with the will that should answer anything you might question Ms. Newsom. It is getting dark and it would appear that a storm is rolling in. Good day Ms. Newsom." With that the cowardly little old man was out the door and gone so fast that Tina wouldn't have believed he could move that fast. Hell the old buzzard had to be nearing eighty at least.

"Son-of-a-bitch." Tina stood there staring at the door for several seconds after the old man had left.

Tina looked at the envelope she held in her hand. She noticed that it held more than a letter inside but also a small object that she couldn't quite make out. She wondered if she should open it this minute or get her things out of her car before she did. She really didn't want to wait and get stuck trying to bring her things in with the rain beating down on her. She also wasn't so sure she want to stay here one night little one six months. Her impulse at the moment was to run back to her car and get in it and drive away. Who would know the difference? She would. She remembered what it said in the will that once the property was passed on to her and she accepted the keys, she was responsible for fulfilling her obligations to her aunt as well as the estate. She was also in a bit of a financial bind. She had had to quit her job to come here and if she left then she was flat broke with nowhere to go. She would probably have to live out of her car until she found a job. She had no family and what friends she had wouldn't want her camping out on their couches for more than a few days even if they said it was OK. Crap she thought, she was stuck.

Laying the envelope on a table in the entrance hall Tina went to her car to start bringing her things in. She thought it would have been nice if the old bastard had at least offered to help her bring her things in. She was grateful that she had at least thought to make a stop at a grocery store before coming on here. She had even packed a cooler with some things when she was there so that she could at least enjoy a cold beverage now.

She had placed everything in the floor in the hall as she brought her things in with the last item being the cooler and the last bag of groceries. She didn't brother to set these things down but went searching for the kitchen instead. Tina barely took notice of the two rooms she passed as she made her way down a hallway on one side of the steps. She had no idea where anything was but assumed like with any other old house the kitchen would be in the back. At the end of the hall was a closed door and that was where she was headed. After juggling the bags in her arms she managed to turn the nob and open in the door. Yep it was a kitchen all right.

After setting the cooler down she placed the bag down on the kitchen table then she went back and got the rest of the groceries. Taking a look around the kitchen once she had done that she felt she had a least gotten lucky here. The kitchen was relatively newly done and although in places you could see a very thin layer of dust it was clean and tidy.

"Thank God for small miracles." She said to no one there as she put away things and then grabbed herself a soda and headed back to the drawing room. She decided to wait about finding a place to sleep until after she had read that damn letter.

Going back to the sofa Tina curled up with her legs tucked beneath her and opened the letter. When she did a small key fell out landing in her lap.

"Well that answers that question." Tina didn't even notice that she had spoken out loud.

It was at that moment a crash of thunder broke the silence of the place and the room became more brightly lit by the streak of lightening that broke across the evening sky.

"Shit. I think I'll just sleep down here tonight." Again Tina took no notice of her speaking to an empty room. All she was aware of was right now she definitely had no desire to go traipsing through this old house in the dark. She honestly expected the power to go off at any moment leaving her sitting there in the dark.

Tina rummaged through her handbag and pulled out a light she kept for emergencies along her cell phone which had a light app on it. Fortunately her phone had been on a charger in the car when she pulled up to the place. At least now if the power went out she would have something to light her way to those damn candles on the mantle should there be a need for them.

Tina unfolded the letter and began to read.

Tina,

As you are reading this then I have passed and you have inherited everything I own. I know you must be asking yourself just how we are related since from everything you've been told you have no blood relatives. Well you do. I'm not your aunt however. I am, or maybe I should say here, I was your grandmother. Your mother died in childbirth and I didn't feel I was in any position to take care of a small child at the time so I handed you over to someone else to raise. The understanding was that you were not to find out where you came from so they were to tell you nothing of your actual birth. I made sure they lived up to their agreement.

***

Tina stopped here for a moment to take in what she was reading. The fact that this woman was claiming to be her grandmother was bad enough but that she was doing so in such a cold matter of fact manor was a bit much. To find out that the people who had raised her and she had thought were her parents had done so out of anything other than love wasn't devastating however. They never had been overly affectionate with her, hell it always appeared they barely tolerated her, at least now it all made some sense. Well wasn't life just full of shits and giggles.

***

On the mantel is a box and the key you now possess goes to that box. If you want more answers to the questions you now must have you will find them there.

Casandra Mason

That was it? Tina flipped the letter over to see if there might be something, anything on the back but she already knew there wasn't.

"Well ain't that some shit?" No declaration of love or anything about missing out on her growing up? No wonder Mr. Carver hadn't like the old bitch. Hell Tina didn't like her and she had never met the old woman.

Now all Tina could think about was getting through the next six months and selling everything in the house and getting the hell away from here. She looked at the box on the mantle. She considered leaving it just where it was. To hell with more answers she thought. Why should she give a damn what the old bitch might pass on to her. Still...

Getting up from the sofa Tina walked over to the mantle and stared at the box that was almost at eye level with her. Did she really give a damn what else the old bat might have in store for her. Tina turned away from the box and took a few steps toward the entrance hall but stopped. She stood there a moment contemplating what to do next. Something inside her told her to keep walking but there was something else that said open it. She turned around.

***

Mr. Carver was gathering his things from his bedroom when suddenly something felt off. He thought he could hear breathing as the room seemed to grow colder. The lights were on but somehow the room appeared to be growing darker. The old man began backing out of the room but the door slammed shut before he could make it through it and he ended up with his back pressed hard against it. He felt the prickles of fear dance across his skin.

Turning around Mr. Carver tried to turn the door handle but couldn't get it to budge. A drop of cold sweat seeped out of his hairline at the back of his head and slipped below the collar of his shirt and made its way slowly down the center of his spine sending a deep shiver over his body. He felt as if a thousand demonic fingers had caressed his skin. The manmade light of the room had dimmed to barely nothing as a red glow seemed to build over his head.

The man turned around to face the room to try and figure out a way to escape the thing that he knew would soon overtake him. The red glow grew brighter as it appeared to float from the ceiling to the floor only a few steps in front of him. Someone or something seemed to appear in the middle of that almost blinding red glow now. The pulsating black figure slowly took form and a voice more dark and threatening than anything he could have imagined bellowed out at him.

"Where do you think you're going old man? I'm not done with you."

***

Tina drove into town the next morning to find a new attorney. She had things to take care of. She stopped in at a café for a cup of coffee only to hear of what had happened to Mr. Carver. The waitress told her that he had been found sometime in the very early hours of morning crouched up against a wall. He had managed to somehow tear his own eyes out of his head and although still alive, though only barely, his mind was gone. All he could do was babble something about his old client Mrs. Mason. The waitress had to walk away at that point to pour coffee for another customer.

Tina took another sip of her coffee as a smile crossed her lips.

# The Tempestuous Teen

### J. A. Kyser

### The Tempestuous Teen

Corrine awoke to the alarm, BZZZZZZZ. Snooze, where the hell was the snooze? Screw it. Might as well just get up and get it over with. Early appointment today. She hated early appointments. She couldn't seem to keep things straight in her mind, let alone that early in the morning. Adding to the irritation the appointment was with that bitch psychiatrists Dr. Pima, she asked way too many stupid questions! If someone happened to be listening they'd think she was the one who was crazy.

Everything was fine till about a year ago when she started her freshman year. She started to get depressed. Didn't all 15 year olds get depressed? She yelled at her parents. She refused to eat. They tried getting her to talk to her old friends, they were old friends for a reason. They had even tried finding her new friends. If she wanted new friends she would go out and find them herself. Pfffttt!

Getting up Corrine headed for the bathroom to get ready for the day. Stepping into the shower she noticed that her mom had bought the special shampoo she insisted on. Corrine thought her hair was one of her many great features and wanted to make sure it stayed that way which was why she would only use that one shampoo. Her hair softly framed her face and stylishly covered one eye and lent her an air of mystery so was it really too much to ask for? Mother complained about the cost but she felt if you wanted to present the best, you needed to use the best. That's why she quit eating, she was very aware of her weight.

Once she finished with her shower Corrine returned to her room to dress in clean, stylish clothes. If she didn't hate everybody and everything Corrine could be class president or prom queen. The problem with that was the other kids were intimidated by her and gave Corrine a wide berth. Corrine had developed a way of not looking at you but looking through you, almost like she could make you disappear if you looked her in the eye. She moved like a cat, gracefully silent. You wouldn't even realize she was near until she wanted you to know.

As usual she appeared in the kitchen like a ghost. There was one piece of dry toast and half a glass of orange juice waiting for her. Well, maybe she did eat a little. It took energy to hate so many people. A haughty expression crossed her face as she daintily ate her toast. Oz bounced into the room. Just like all little brothers, Oz was not intimidated by her. He felt his sole purpose in this life was to aggravate her. Oz liked to keep her on her toes. Corrine felt he should be banned to the cellar until he learned how to act like a human.

"How do you feel this morning?" Corrine's mother, Karen, asked. She was the typical soccer mom. Her brother played, so Karen had to be the supermom. She baked cookies to raise money for uniforms as well as volunteering to drive their minivan to out of town games. Corrine found her mother's whole persona a bore.

Corrine felt her mother was a fraud. If she was the 'perfect mommy' why did Corrine hate her so? She must have done some horrible thing to her as a baby. She just couldn't remember, one day it would come to the surface and everyone would know. Father was always gone in the mornings because of his high powered job uptown. She didn't know exactly what he did because she really didn't care. He always managed to make Oz's games on the weekends which of course Corrine refused to attend. He never even made an effort to be at any of her functions. The symbolic loving father. He had probably molested her as a baby. One day in the near future all these memories would come flooding back and they would all end up on Dr. Phil. She would write a book about it allowing her to become a rich recluse.

Corrine really was a snobby bitch. She treated everyone like servants. It was a wonder she didn't try to make them make her bed and draw her bath. She contemptuously pushed the empty plate to the edge of the granite counter. It wasn't her job to put it in the sink and no matter what her mother said, she never would.

"We better get going if we want to make it on time, you know how the doctor feels about us being late. I can't afford another late charge." Karen said, mostly to herself.

What the hell thought Corrine? They could pay the whole bill with cash if they wanted!

"Oz, you better hurry or you'll miss the bus. Now if I'm not there by four thirty, start walking. I don't want you walking that street after dark." She said with a worried look on her face.

Corrine sneered. "What? The little baby can't walk home all by his lonesome? Are you worried that one of those old fogies you call neighbors may let their little ankle biter out and Oz will get nipped?"

"Cory, you don't know what could happen after dark. I don't want you out there either." Concern for her children crept into her voice.

"Really mother! You know I hate it when you call me that. My name is Corrine, not Cory!" Her face was mottled with red splotches, she was so angry.

"I'm sorry, Corrine. I didn't mean to upset you. Calm down now. We have to leave." As she walked to the minivan, she shook her head. Every day that went by it seemed Cory moved farther away into her own little world.

Corrine took her usual seat in the back. It made her feel as if she had a chauffeur. She would have one as soon as she got rid of these shackles that were referred to as parents.

They pulled up in front of the clinic and Corrine exited like a queen from a carriage. There were two teenage girls, just about her age, that giggled as she walked by with her nose in the air. Jealousy was something she was used too. They either averted their eyes or giggled because they had never seen anyone as refined as Corrine. She walked to the window and gave the woman her name. She never even looked up. No respect for her betters. She evidently had never been taught good manners.

Dr. Pima was waiting and opened the door to the back as soon as the woman behind the window had said Corrine's name.

Corrine followed her to her office and the same worn out chair. She wondered how many others had sat there and shivered just thinking about it. Dr. Pima looked her straight in the eye and asked what the weather was like.

Corrine was always taken aback by the doctor's arrogance. No one dared to look her in the eye and she was asking her usual mundane questions! The weather, really? What was this? Corrine gave a disgusted sigh and answered. "Sunny and about seventy one degrees."

"How many people are in your family?" Dr. Pima asked, still looking her straight in the eye.

"Four of course, my mother, father, Oz, and myself."

"You don't remember anything about the accident?" At this question Dr. Pima lowered her eyes while waiting for an answer but Corrine just sat there as if nothing had been asked of her.

"Corrine, I think it's time to put the mirrors back up." Dr. Pima again sat there a moment waiting to see if there would be any reaction from Corrine. When there wasn't she decided it was best to end this here. "Corrine I need you to step out and ask your mom to join me in my office. You can have a seat in the waiting room until we're through. It shouldn't take long." With that Dr. Pima escort the young girl to the door and watched her open it.

Soon Corrine's mom was seated in the chair across from the doctor.

"Karen I've told Corrine that we're going to put the mirrors back up. It's been over a year, nothing has helped, medication or therapy. I guess it's time for good old-fashioned bluntness. She still has one foot in this world, but I'm not sure for how long. I think it would be better to do this at home, but I will be there when this happens." Setting a time to meet at Karen's house the doctor got up to escort Karen to the door as she had done with Corrine a little earlier.

"Thank you Dr. Pima." Karen got up and walked to the door, turning around she added, "I hope we're doing the right thing." Karen collected her daughter and made the silent drive back home.

When Corrine got up Friday morning her mother told her she didn't have to go to school that day. She didn't know which was worse, staying home with her mother or going to school with all those boorish children. When she did make it down the stairs she was surprised that her mother had taken Oz to school instead of letting him stay home as well. Maybe her mother was going to do something intelligent, maybe take her shopping for that dress she had been wanting.

When the doorbell rang and her mother opened it to Dr. Pima Corrine was not only surprised but for the life of her she couldn't fathom why she would be here.

"Cory, we need you to listen. We love you very much. We will always be here for you. You know that, right? There is something very important we need you to do." Karen was almost sobbing as she said this. Karen was standing in front of that ugly painting they had bought about a year ago. It was so ugly that they had thrown a sheet over it. Karen grabbed the sheet and pulled. "Now remember we are here for you, Cory. I need you to turn around and look."

Corrine didn't want to look at that ugly painting and began to step back trying to put distance between her and it.

"If this is supposed to be an intervention, where is father? He couldn't make time in his busy schedule to see me? I can't even remember the last time I saw him!" Corrine was raving, her whole face was red. "Daddy is the only one who cares about me."

Karen grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. There she was in all her glory. It was a mirror, not a painting. Memories started to flood in. There had been a school dance and a boy had asked her to go. A real boy, not pretend like she imagined in her room. Maybe she would get her first kiss but she needed a new dress. She only had three outfits, she had to have something new. She went to daddy. He would do it. He always managed to fix things.

Cars, motorcycles, anything with an engine; and her. He could always fix Corrine. He did his side jobs in the evenings after working at the feed plant throwing fifty pound bags of seed all day. She went out to the garage to talk to him. He was under the front end of an older car. She explained what she needed but he remained silent.

"Daddy, if you do this for me, I promise I won't ask for anything else for a year. Joe Dunner pulled himself out from under the car. He looked his daughter straight in the eyes.

"Darlin' if I could I would, you know that. Things have been really tight lately. This is the first big job I've had for a couple months. Baby, I just don't have it."

She was infuriated. He was her daddy. He could do anything but not this, not for her? One day she would be rich and he would come begging while she haughtily turned her face from him. He had rolled back under the car. He couldn't even take the time to talk to her. Her temper got the best of her and she silently walked over and picked up the flint starter for the welder. He had taught her how to light it a few months ago. There was a beat up five gallon gas can in the corner. Corrine reached down and took it by the handle. She did all this without making a sound. As she stepped to the edge of the car he saw her feet.

"Cory, you know you are my angel and I love you very much. I'm so sorry. I know how much this means to you."

"No you don't! You don't know anything!" Corrine dropped the can then kicked it over so it made a stream under the car going for the lowest point. She never took notice of the gas splashing back on her hands and dress. Then she clicked the starter. It took a few tries before it finally sparked and the gas on the floor flared up. Her father had been struggling to get out from under the car and away from the liquid pooling around him but he hadn't been able to move fast enough. Between the grease and other chemicals he had spilled on himself, as well as the gas his daughter had just added to the mix, he was engulfed in a split second. Corrine never expected it would go up so fast. The fire, flashing brightly, engulfed her lower legs causing her dress to burst into flames with finger like tendrils of red and orange reaching up for her long hair. Her hands and arms having been splashed by the gas started to turn red and began to blister as she tried to knock the flames from herself. She could hear her father screaming. This brought a small evil grin to her once delicately blossoming face. Then she collapsed.

She awoke in the hospital. Her hands and lower arms were swathed in bandages. She could only see out of one eye. There were balloons and cards everywhere. Well wishes with some having 'You are our hero!' written on them. Her mother told her how they had found her and how brave she was to have tried to save her father. That was how her hands and arms must have gotten so badly burned from the flames.

"Bring me a mirror." She took a deep breath and looked. Oh My God! Her lovely face and her long, beautiful hair! It was gone!

"My eye, mother. What is wrong with my eye?"

That is when everyone started averting eye contact with her. She decided she never wanted to remember this day. So she didn't. She went to another reality. She would have it all someday. She would be rich. She would never have to worry about clothes again.

Consumables

### Sitarra "LullaDIEs" Sefton

### Consumables

Consumables A Tale of Autophagia - Refers to the process of eating one's own body and a term used to describe a psychological condition marked by the desire to do so. No clear single cause has been identified to explain more severe instances of Autophagia, but in some cases, the condition is linked to pica, the urge to consume inedible objects, or to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Crunch. Crunch. Snap. Crunch.

I nibbled on the stub of my thumb, already long gone. The blood oozed around my mouth and dripped down my chin as I tore the tissue free. I knew I was doing irreversible damage to myself but I couldn't resist. Something told me to eat my fingers one by one. Even though it was clearly a bad idea I obeyed my twisted desire to feed on myself.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Four of my hands digits were missing, gnawed down to the last knuckle. Only my thumb remained as I sucked the raw meat from the bone. It was the pearly white skeletal structure that I enjoyed feeding on most. The pressure needed to snap a chunk off felt like a massage to my teeth and the sensation of finally breaking the bone in my mouth was incomparable to anything else, except for maybe heaven.

Heaven: The realm of angels and the kingdom of God. Funny that I should use such a term to describe my addiction. I have no holy guardian and I cannot blame my actions on demons either. I wish I had some excuse for my obsessive feeding, even a supernatural one, but alas it is simply my own mind telling me to eat. It is because I am weak that I listen.

Crunch. Crunch. Snap!

Finally a shard of jagged bone fell against my tongue, freed from my bloodied hand. The joint began throbbing immediately but my tolerance to the pain was high. It was more than just bearable; it's exactly what I desired. I sat against the wall and leaned my head back while chewing my prize into small enough pieces to swallow.

I cradled my hand by the wrist as I sat staring at the ceiling fan spin in lazy circles. Even though the lighting was already dim I closed my eyes. I focused on the pressure of my teeth against hard bone, the strength of my jaw as I clamped down with greater force, and the release of pressure when the bone gave way and shattered, filling my mouth with splinters of all sizes. The sensation of being poked, stabbed, jabbed, and stuck by seemingly hundreds of tiny bone fragments was oddly enjoyable. My tongue, cheeks, and gums were sore from the onslaught but still I continued on until finally the finger was swallowed. My throat burned from the sharp ends dragging down the sides leaving deep scratches behind but eventually it all went down.

Then the relief hit, the pain was over and there was only smug satisfaction left. When the crunching and chomping noises stopped I was forced to focus on the small rooms other sounds. The soft hum and occasional squeak of the wobbly fan above did little to dull the persistent drip of my blood against the hardwood floor. Every time a drop smacked against the ground it demanded my attention, but I didn't want to see the damage done.

Drip plop. Drip plop. Drip plop. Drip plop.

Shame began to settle in. The metallic sweetness I tasted in my mouth once brought a sense of euphoria, but now the blood tasted like sour poison. The droplets invaded my ears and echoed with the volume of atomic bombs being set off one by one. I became disgusted with myself and silently cursed any gods listening for the sick game they played within my mind. With my eyes closed I could almost feel my fingers still, and could trick myself into believing I hadn't devoured them. I even wiggled all five digits and swore I felt them brush against each other. When I couldn't take the temptation to look any longer I tilted my head down and opened my eyes. My mangled hand came into view. The fingers were all missing now, save for a single joint left where a thumb once was. The blood painted my hand in crimson ooze. The sticky, half-dry liquid seeped all the way down to my elbow.

I cradled my damaged hand by the wrist and allowed myself to cry. The tears flowed down my face leaving streaks in the gore surrounding my mouth and smeared up my cheeks. My breathing became rapid as I began to panic. Still I forced myself to stare at my mutilated hand. I tried to think of a way to fix it while knowing deep down the damage was irreversible. I hoped I was in a nightmare but knew this was my twisted reality.

I cried in silence for hours, and when the tears were all gone I inspected my self-made wounds closer. The tips of each missing finger were anywhere from months to weeks old. The layers of flesh surrounding broken bone were healing at various rates and the scabs appeared puffy and infected. Whitish yellow puss pockets littered the bite marks and some areas of thick scab had turned black or green from the bacteria it been exposed to.

I don't know how the desire got so out of hand, but I remembered the initial thought. It started with nail biting; I'd been told it's a nasty habit but I didn't listen. Pica is what they called my nervous tendency. Eventually I chewed my nails almost completely off causing my finger tips to split and bleed. Once my nails were gone I still felt the urge to chew and began nibbling on my fingertips. It was painful at first but satisfied my filthy habit and so the sting was ignored.

I told myself I could control it, that I wouldn't actually eat my own hand.

Look at me now, I thought sarcastically.

The idea of anyone finding out kept me confined to my tiny studio apartment. I quit my job after the evidence of my addiction became too noticeable and questions started being asked. I was once a social person. Shy around strangers but not unfriendly. It surprised me at first when no one noticed my sudden absence or came to check on me. In the end it only added to my urge to chew. I wondered if anyone ever thought about me or if they were curious to know what became of me.

Nervousness overwhelmed me. The idea of anyone discovering just how far my bad habit had gone caused my heart rate to quicken and my stomach to churn. Suddenly I felt the urge to nibble again and examined my gore covered hand. With still one knuckle left of my thumb I wiggled what was left of the extremity. I bit down on my lower lip while contemplating my choices. I could either give into temptation or I could quit while I still had something left of my fingers.

Just one more time then I'll go get help, I told myself as I brought my hand up to my mouth.

I'd told myself, just one more time, many times before. Deep down I knew I wouldn't stop. In order to seek professional help I'd need to tell someone of my addiction and that too wouldn't happen. I'd eat myself alive and probably be found by the landlord when he comes to collect past due rent.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Snap.

The curse of unnatural hunger is mine to suffer, and I shall suffer it alone.

***

# The Chosen

### Julie A. Kyser

### The Chosen

The dark figure watched the realtor and the middle aged woman coming up the gravel walkway. He wondered if this was the mark. The black form backed away from the window and faded into the wall.

"Everything has been done and is under warranty for at least a year." Sandra, the realtor told Kim. "It's perfect for one person." She was determined to make this sell. The house had been on the market way too long. The out of state owner refused to drop the price, but called at least once a week threatening to hire another realty company.

Kim was forty-one. She had been married for 15 years to one of the most successful criminal lawyers in town. She was a paralegal. After college she had moved to Scofield; it was a mid-sized town that was growing with many smaller companies establishing themselves. Kim had thought this would be an easy place to find a job her nest egg was running out and she had to find a job, any job. She had walked into Jays' office with her resume. The girl at the front desk didn't even look up as she told her they were not hiring. Jay walked out of his office just as Kim had turned to leave. He looked her up and down. Anyone could tell by the look on his face he liked what he saw. At twenty-three she did not have the body of a runway model. She had full breasts, a perfectly rounded rump, dirty blonde hair that had been pulled tight into a low bun, full lips and porcelain skin. What drew him in were her eyes. Deep blue, almost violet when the light hit them. She smelled soft, clean, and almost innocent. Jay saw the resume in her hand and called her into his office. He was ten years her senior and still married at the time. The young, inexperienced girl was flattered that the prominent lawyer paid her so much attention. Telling her that he was going to divorce his wife and make her his wife for life. Eventually they did marry. Right away Kim felt that she was nothing but a showpiece for him. Now a grown woman of the world she had known for a few years that Jay was cheating on her. Becoming disillusioned with the "cultured class", she had made a plan of escape. Kim was determined she would not walk away from this sham of a marriage with nothing for her misery. She went back to school to freshen up her skills. At the same time a private detective was hired to catch Jay in his indiscretions. By the time she was done with him, he'd wish he never met her.

Now she wanted to start fresh. The small house was perfect. Lots of splashes of color, big comfy furniture and only one bedroom so no one could wear out their welcome. Everything she couldn't have in the ostentatious house she had shared with Jay. This was her house, she could just feel it. The grand tour had to be taken just to make sure there were no huge problems with the home. Every room she walked into was lovelier than the last. Nothing would have to be done. They arrived back in the ample foyer.

"One more thing I want to show you that I think you will like." Sandra whispered, like it was a secret. She opened a door set in the wall that Kim had thought was just a closet. There was a set of very narrow stairs. Sandra flipped a switch and two bare bulbs lit up. One at the top of the stairs and one in the middle of the room.

Weren't attics usually the warmest room in the house? It felt cool in here. There was a very musty smell from where the house had been closed off for so many years. There was also an undertone of sulfur like someone had just lit a match. The only place an adult could stand up straight was right down the middle of the room. The corners were so pitch black no light could penetrate all the way into them. Even with the bulbs and the two dormer windows it seemed too dark in the corners, Joy could have sworn she had seen something moving in one. She concentrated hard trying to see movement again, nothing. Engrossed as she was, she didn't realize Sandra was talking. "You could fix this up and put a window unit in, it would make a great guest room or have shelves built in for storage." Kim shook her head no. "I'm just fine with the downstairs. For now the only thing I am doing with this is having a deadbolt installed." As they walked down the stairs, Kim felt as if they were being watched. She was afraid to turn around because of what she might see.

The sale went through quickly. She had more than enough money to buy the house, also to furnish it inside and out. The newly single woman still had a nice figure in her savings account, enough to keep her comfortable for a while. Kim loved having the house to herself. Being able to curl up on the couch with a good book, eat while she watched TV. Whatever she felt like. No more dinner parties with people she didn't know and didn't want to know.

Every so often Kim would catch just a whiff of that awful smell in the attic, it must be getting in through the vents the logical side of her mind would tell her. She started feeling like someone was watching her all the time. The hair on the back of her neck would stand straight up. She would hear the sound of clothing swishing by her; the musty smell with the undertone of sulfur seemed to be getting stronger.

One night while sitting on the couch reading a good book Kim distinctly heard the latch on the attic door click followed by light footfalls up the stairs. She was so sure of what she had heard that she grabbed her phone and ran out the door. She kept her eyes on the doorway. There was no way someone (or something) could get out without passing by that door. She dialed 911 and waited

When the police arrived they went in and inspected the house. They unlatched the attic door although they didn't bother to go up. "Ma'am, we've checked everything, and all the doors and windows are locked from the inside."

"I swear I heard the attic door and footsteps going up the stairs." She was almost crying. "Ma'am, we didn't even look in the attic, let me show you something." He walked to the door and turned the deadbolt. He pulled the door wide and switched on the light. "Just look ma'am", she understood right away what he was showing her. She had not even opened that door in the five months she had lived here. There was a substantial amount of dust everywhere. Not a mote had been disturbed. "Are you sure you didn't fall asleep and dreamt it?" He was trying to be nice, but she had already made an ass of herself.

As she locked the door a chill went up her spine as if someone were standing right behind her. That smell! It was getting progressively stronger.

Kim didn't sleep at all that night, but nothing else unusual happened. By morning she had almost convinced herself that it had all been a nightmare. The day went smoothly. She had picked up a little work. A lot of her new clients had given her work because of what a great job she had done against Jay in divorce court. She could get most of the information needed for this assignment right at home on her computer. She had been so intent on her web search she didn't even notice it was getting dark. She hadn't had a pee break in hours, let alone something to eat. Just then a shadow passed over her. She turned quickly, but nothing was there. Fall was coming and it was getting dark early, maybe a cloud had just passed over the window. She shook it off and headed to the bathroom. After finishing she splashed cold water on her face. She would sleep well tonight. A frozen pizza and straight to bed sounded perfect.

She heard something above her. Just a faint sound, like soft shoes scraping across the floor. She wasn't going to let it go this time. If she was going to look like an ass, nobody need to know, but her. She grabbed a flashlight, moving as fast as she could while still being silent. The bolt made noise as she pulled it aside, she flipped the light switch as she ran upstairs. Something was in the air. That smell of course and much stronger now. Power, like a power line that was down. She could almost hear it buzzing. The buzzing got louder and she began to feel like the floor were moving. Like she was in a funhouse. Looking around, she could see two images. Like one interposed on the other. One was the empty attic, the other was an ornate table and chairs with candles everywhere. Then she saw the shadow again. That was all her mind could take, she passed out.

She woke up about an hour later. Everything seemed to be normal again, she must have hit her head in the fall. Her logical mind was trying to convince her it was because, no sleep plus nothing to eat all day would do strange things to you. She felt dizzy and passed out. In the back of her mind, Kim knew something else was going on, was she crazy? Did she have a brain tumor? Or was it something else altogether? If she was going to figure out anything she needed to eat and get a good night's sleep.

Kim woke up the next morning feeling good save for her head, which was still hurting a bit. In the morning light, it all seemed like a dream. It was a beautiful fall morning, most of the leaves had fallen and it looked like a multicolored carpet. The air felt brisk and refreshing. When she looked out the window there were scarecrows and pumpkins up and down the street. Halloween was just a few days away.

She closed the curtain so she could get dressed. All at once she broke out into goosebumps. The smell of old things and sulfur so strong, it was like standing in the middle of a shootout.

Without even turning around, Kim knew he was in the room. Standing her ground she turned to face him. Whatever he was, he reminded her of pictures of death in his black flowing robes. Being slightly translucent, with wispy smoke-like tendrils curling around the edges of the long black mantle, it was beyond frightening.

"I am called Traveler. What you experienced last night was a time jump. We select our meeting places many years ahead and it is my responsibility to make sure the area is still safe. You walked in just as the time loop was closing. What you experienced was just a mild sensation of what an actual time jump feels like."

He must be reading my mind Kim thought.

"No. I cannot read your mind, I have heard all these questions many times, over many generations." Kim started to open her mouth, Traveler interrupted her. "Why do they call me Traveler? I travel ahead of the rest to make sure all is safe and ready. It is then my responsibility to mark The Chosen."

"The rest?" Kim's' mind was going in circles trying to take everything in.

"The Council of Order. My kind represent one side of the order. The Council keeps the earth balanced. We are known as The Scales in many old tales."

Kim couldn't see his face, wasn't even sure there was a face under that flowing black hood. "Who is the other side of the Council?

There are those that are close to the earth and its spirits called The Keepers of Mother Earth, whom you know as American Indians and other such peoples." His voice was so deep and smooth; it could almost put you in a trance.

"Why did you say they were on one side?" What side are you on?" She queried in a shaky voice.

"We manage the underworld. We keep the lid on things, so to say. We don't bombard the earth or mankind as long as our needs are met. As long as we help keep Mother Earth in balance and only take what is agreed upon, they don't release their powerful warriors to hunt us down."

Kim frowned "We still have natural disasters all the time."

"Many of them begin with things Man should not be playing with. All of life is like a domino effect. If one species of animal goes extinct before its time, there is nothing we can do after the event. Any future animals that may have evolved from the extinct animal, will never be. This is true of river diversion, pollution and the many others ways in which Man changes his environment. The earth also needs cleansing sometimes. An old forest will get so thick that new trees can't grow because there is not enough sunlight. Wildfires do this naturally. As soon as the ground cools, different plants and trees start to move in and bring new food along with new animals. If we don't release the pressure from a volcano from time to time, it will back up and when it does blow, it would take a whole continent with it."

"But your clothes and the sulfur smell. Those are associated with demons and devils. Is that what you are?"

"No. There are no demons or devils. We are the caretakers of the underworld. We may not be as friendly or nicely clothed, but try living our life. What we do have is a good sense of humor and a love for practical jokes. So from time to time, people may 'see' a real ghost." He chuckled at this.

"You said you travel ahead to mark The Chosen. What do you do with The Chosen?" Her voice trembled slightly. "And just who or what is the intended?"

"For as much as you may hate us and call us demons; we are an essential part of the scales that keep the earth balanced. The checks and balances keep the earth moving forward. The day the earth stops moving forward is the day the earth will die. There have been a few of us that have gone rogue and used powers that for no reason should ever be used. These rouges we have to hunt down and destroy. Our race does not reproduce. We have to add to our ranks every so often because we can still die. The only way to replace the ones who are lost is to take one of your kind, teach him, train him, and change him."

The woman hung her head and thought for a moment. "I have so many questions, I don't know where to start. If you are not devils or demons, what are you?"

"I told you. We are the other side of the scales. You cannot have new growth and evolution without a natural disaster cleaning it out first. Our work may seem destructive, but it is just as important as what the Keepers of Mother Earth and their kind do. The smell comes from where we live. We live far underground and usually near a magma floe for heat. And of course it is going to smell musty. We are underground, usually with no fresh air."

The woman shivered, but not from the cold. "You still haven't answered my first question. Who is to be chosen?"

"We looked at you first woman because you have no immediate family, you would not be missed for quite a while. We prefer a certain type of person, we are not sure if you will be suited for this. We may not be demons or devils, but our life is not easy. We prefer to find someone who has done things in this life that are not considered acceptable. As I have said. We teach, we train, and we change them. You may not be a good choice for a convert."

Kim sighed in relief. "So what will you do?"

"The Council will be here soon. If I can't find a suitable replacement to mark, you will have to do."

The divorcee` didn't even have to think twice. A sly smile slid across her face and those beautiful blue eyes darkened even more. "I have the perfect one to be chosen." She said in a conspiratorial tone. "My ex-husband treats his employees, his loved ones as objects. When they are no longer useful to him, he discards them like an old shirt."

"Sounds like he may make a good candidate. You would have to lure him here somehow. These council meetings take a lot of preparation. They can't just be moved. Humans have seen us from time to time, but we prefer to stay hidden. This location was picked years ago and all the protective spells and special precautions cannot be moved."

"What day and time do you need him here?" She knew just how to lure him in.

"He would have to be here twice. Once to be marked, then on the night of Samhain for the actual ceremony. Even though mankind has corrupted the real meaning of Samhain, it is a very sacred night for us."

Kim went to her office to prepare herself for her role in this charade. What would get him here and on time? Money of course. She had the safe deposit box in the bank with her engagement ring, her wedding rings and a few baubles he had bought for her to show off to their friends. She had been granted them in the divorce because they were considered gifts. She picked up the phone and dialed Jay's private cell. It was just past 8pm and he answered on the second ring.

"What the hell do you want now? Blood? Because that's about all I have left since you cleaned me out in the divorce."

"Well, if you're going to be like that, I can just hang up now. I was calling to proffer you a peace offering."

Jay's voice calmed as he asked "What kind of peace offering? This isn't just another one of your little head games?"

"No Jay, I actually had a change of heart and felt bad. I know I took everything from you. This may not be much, but I don't have to give you anything." It took all her self-control not to laugh out loud. "I swear Jay, at one time I almost loved you. Now, do you want to know what it is?"

It was quiet on the other end and then you could hear a long drawn out sigh. "Go on. I'm listening."

"All that flashy jewelry you bought me no longer fits my lifestyle. All, but a few pieces that I kept are in a safety deposit box."

"About how much are we talking about here?" Jay queried.

"Around $175,000 more or less. And it's all yours. You come over tomorrow evening after dark, by yourself and we will draw up a contract between the two of us that can be signed when you receive the jewelry. It will say that I am gifting it to you so I won't have to pay taxes on it. Come back on Halloween about 12:30am by yourself to look over the contract. If you agree, we both sign, you walk out the door with the goods and we never have to speak again."

She was all smiles when she called for Traveler. "It's all set-up. He will be here tomorrow evening, and you can mark him then. He will be back on Samhain, at that time, he becomes yours forever." She had a glow about her as she told him the plan.

Jay showed up the following evening. She invited him in and asked if he would like a drink. He shook his head no and replied "I just want to get this over with." He looked like a broken man in his expensive suit. The suit looked as if it had been slept in. He had at least a few days of face stubble. His shoulders sagged as if life had hammered him into the ground like a railroad spike.

"You realize you ruined me with all this, Kim? Most of it was totally fabricated in your fragmented mind."

"Who did they believe, Jay? The cheating spouse or the naive young girl who was convinced he was her Prince Charming. He had cut her off from family and friends, then abandoned her." She chuckled deep in her throat. "Just be happy I was nice enough to throw you a bone. That's more than I did for my family. See you Halloween evening. Don't be late!"

"Why does it have to be so late at night? Sounds like it might be a set-up."

"Because I don't want the neighbors seeing you here. That might give me a bad reputation."

He dejectedly shook his head yes and walked out.

"It's all set, Traveler. This man deserves this. I wasted my best years on him."

"One thing the Council has discovered about mankind over the observations of generations is that men can change. Good can change to bad, bad can change to good."

The next day was Samhain. She started her day with a trip to the bank, the manager accompanied her to the vault where she removed all her jewelry and dropped the key in his open palm. She smiled as she thought about Jay standing in the middle of the underworld with a box of useless jewelry. On her way home she stopped to eat a light dinner and have a glass of wine to celebrate. She arrived home around 8pm. Traveler was there waiting for her.

"I have some preparations to do, you cannot be present while these rituals are performed. May I suggest you go to your sleeping quarters and prepare yourself? I will come and escort you when all is ready."

"I definitely want to look my best so he will never forget what he lost." An odd smile slid across her lips. She showered, did her hair, picked out her most flattering dress that emphasized her ample breasts and perfect derriere. She applied her make-up flawlessly. She was gorgeous.

At midnight, the start of The Witching Hour, Traveler showed up at her door to collect her. She was so excited. This was more than she could have ever hoped for! The ultimate revenge! The black cloaked Traveler led her to the attic. It was not the same place it had been when she had been here last night, candles were everywhere she looked. All her personal things had been removed and a large ornately carved table sat in the center of the room with twelve chairs placed around it. Two of the chairs were huge and even more intricately carved than the others. One sat at each end of the table. On one side of the table all the individuals were cloaked just as Traveler was. The other side of the table was a mix of men and women, young, old, Keepers of Mother Earth. Traveler stood behind an old, wizened woman at the head of the table.

Kim turned toward the stairs to fetch the jewelry.

"YOU WON'T BE NEEDING THAT." Traveler did not yell, but his voice seemed to reverberate off the walls. Kim stopped in her tracks. She had never heard Traveler like this. She was beginning to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She stammered, "But, but Jay will be here any minute. Shouldn't I be prepared?"

"We have already taken care of that. The contract is signed with your signature. The package was delivered to him personally earlier this evening. Now come and stand behind your master, King Mobius, Kim." She just stood there in disbelief. "NOW." Traveler's voice resonated off the walls. She was terrified. "Remember what I said to you about how people can change from good to bad? You have changed, Kim. You get enjoyment out of another human suffering. You lied. You lost your empathy and could not let go of your vengeance. Evil has many faces, Kim. The right one was chosen."

# Doll Craft

### S.J. Lucas

### Doll Craft

The shop's bell tinkled. Ronald 'Rusty' DaSilva waddled through the door, led by his portly gut.

"Morning Lilyanne, did the Gerhard order arrive yet?" he asked.

Lilyanne pulled her turquoise cardigan tighter around herself. "Yes, Rusty. They're over there."

He leered at Lilyanne, touched his tongue to his whiskered cheek, hiked his brown pants high enough to outline the bulge between his legs, and walked over to the delivery boxes to check the contents against the invoice.

"These dolls are amazing, girl. But I reckon yours are much better. People can't seem to get enough of yours," he said. "Your mama, may she rest in peace, taught you the craft well."

He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling shelves that displayed Lilyanne's incredible handmade dolls and figurines. "They're so life- like! It's as if you've captured a bit of someone's soul inside."

Lilyanne did not reply. Her stomach somersaulted in a pit of disgust for her boss.

Rusty squashed his considerable girth behind the till counter and filed the invoice. There was hardly enough room for Lilyanne as it was, but Rusty took up the very last inch of space, rubbing up against Lilyanne as much as he could get away with.

Her disgust for him deepened with every passing day, but she couldn't quit. Lilyanne's financial situation was difficult enough, even with this job money was scarce since Mama died, and for all his faults, Rusty did pay a decent wage, plus let her keep seventy percent when one of her dolls were sold.

Lilyanne winced as Rusty leaned over her to grab another file. He rubbed his crotch against her thigh.

"Ha-ha, sorry girl. What can I say? When it's big, it's big and all I say to the jealous chaps is, eat your heart out, eh."

His chuckle grated her raw nerves _. Big, my foot, one would probably need a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass to find anything dangling under that stomach!_

Lilyanne pushed past him with difficulty, picked up a dust cloth and began wiping the shelves with her back to him. A look of sickened disgust squinched her elven features into a demonic sneer.

For several minutes they worked in silence and Lilyanne became lost in thought. Rusty's voice from over by the till brought her back to reality, and she sighed.

"Newspaper says that Mister Goldbucket done kicked the bucket. It says here that he was found dead in his home yesterday afternoon... looks like he fell down the stairs and broke his neck.

"Strange, eh, that makes four so far this month! First it was old aunty Killkirk who died of a heart attack at the beginning of the month. She came in and bought that oriental doll of yours for her granddaughter, Katy, remember? Poor Katy! She's a sweetheart.

"Then it was that prissy- missy Dolly Carline, she slipped in the shower and fell through the glass door, hit her head on the sink apparently, so sad, really. Do you remember Dolly? She was that rude lady who came in to buy those twin porcelain dolls for her twins. Bitter as lemons that one! But I do feel for the twins losing their mum and all, eh."

Lilyanne remained silent, savoring each bit of news as Rusty read in his lazy drawl.

"It goes on to say here that Darren McRubard was struck by lightning on October twenty third. Shame, on his wife's birthday too. I remember selling him that figurine of yours; you know the one... a little girl with a pink dress, riding a blue unicorn. It was a birthday gift for his wife. What did he say her name was? Angela...no, no, Andrea! That's it, Andrea...poor woman.

"Now Arthur Goldbucket as recently as yesterday and it is so tragic really," he said, and closed the newspaper. "But at least Arthur's dogs won't be shitting on anyone's lawn anymore, eh!"

Lilyanne smiled. She avoided looking at Rusty's face while she straightened her latest creation's brown jacket. It was a porcelain man sniffing a cherry pie. It was as fat as Rusty and had auburn hair like him, too.

"It's lucky the loved ones now have your special dolls to treasure, eh girl? Mind you, none of them seemed polite when they came in for their purchases. They seemed pretty rude, but oh well," he said. He cleared his throat. "Again I say that nobody makes 'em like you do, Lil. Other doll makers don't hold a candle to you. They can eat their hearts out, eh!"

Lilyanne grinned. _My dolls are truly special treasures. They're truly, very special._

The day progressed with several customers coming and going with doll purchases. All of which were Lilyanne's creations. Lunchtime came, and Rusty grabbed his brown jacket off the rack. He stood right behind Lilyanne where she was bent over order boxes repacking the Gerhard dolls.

"I'm out for lunch, Lil. Want me to bring you anything back, a coffee, some cherry pie, a foot long sausage with sauce maybe?"

He wiggled his eyebrows lasciviously on 'footling sausage with sauce'.

"No, thank you Rusty, I'm good," she said. _I wouldn't touch an inch of you even if I was using somebody else's hands!_

"Well... if you're sure?"

"I said I'm good. Thanks." Her voice was clipped. Unbidden rage boiled in her veins and flushed her skin.

Rusty winked. "Alright then, see you in an hour, girl."

***

Lilyanne finished cashing up. They'd sold eleven dolls during the course of the day. She was stapling the receipts to the sales slip when Rusty, who was gone for the entire afternoon and made Lilyanne lose out on another day's lunch break, bustled over and dumped a box on the counter.

"For you, Lil as thanks for the good sales today," he said, smiling. "It's a cherry pie. You know, for dessert. Now you can eat your heart out, eh."

Lilyanne lifted the lid and stared at the pie. 'Thanks, Rusty." _Wish I could smash this into your face the next time you utter that stupid 'eh' sound, you fat bush pig._

"Sure, no problem, now come give ole Rusty a thank you kiss."

Lilyanne managed to squash past Rusty and made her way to the shelves, putting as much space between them as possible.

"I have a gift for you too,' she said. 'It's special, just for you."

Lilyanne took the boy with the pie figurine off the shelf and walked over to Rusty. His smile widened and he bounced from foot to foot with anticipation.

"Here, take it," she said.

"What? No kiss?" Rusty pretended to pout.

Lilyanne smiled coyly. She looked straight into Rusty's eyes, kissed the top of the figurine's head and said, "Eat your heart out, eh."

***

The shop's bell tinkled. A police officer entered the store. Lilyanne looked up from the newspaper she was reading.

"Morning ma'am, are you Lilyanne Anderson?"

Lilyanne nodded.

Policeman number one walked toward the counter, a file held out for her to take. Policeman number two was inspecting the figurines.

"Did you make these?" Asked policeman two.

Lilyanne nodded again. "What is this?"

"This is the last will and testament of one Ronald 'Rusty' DaSilva, he has left this shop to you," policeman one said.

"Why would he be giving me this, officer? What has happened to Rusty?"

A wordless moment passed between the two policemen, and officer number two shrugged, resigned.

"We have some terrible news, Miss Anderson. Mister Ronald DaSilva was discovered murdered in his home last night," said policeman two.

"Oh no, how awful, poor Rusty, but how did he die officer?" She asked, managing to look contrite.

"Umm, it's unusual," policeman one said, "but... all we could find was a smashed figurine next to his body. And it, um, looks like something ate his heart out."

Lilyanne gasped. 'That is incredibly unfortunate, a smashed figurine? That does sound strange. Who do you think did it?"

"We aren't sure as yet, ma'am, unless that figurine was some sort of fancy voodoo doll, came to life and did the deed... "Officer one joked, then turned serious after looking at his partner's horrified face. "But we are continuing with the investigation. If you think of anything that will help us with our investigation, please call the number on this card." Policeman one handed her a card.

"I will do so, officer," she said.

"Thank you for your time, ma'am, and we are truly sorry for your loss," policeman two said, before following his partner out the door.

_Sorry for my loss, are you? Well I'm not!_ Lilyanne's throaty chuckle reached an earsplitting crescendo as she hugged the deed to the shop tightly to her chest. She inhaled sharply as the shop bell tinkled once more, her professional mask now back in place.

"Welcome to Doll Craft, sir, where our dolls are _truly to die for_. How can I help you?"

Sisters

### Cathy Pace Matthews

### Sisters

I'm going to admit something that I have never admitted before. I hate my sister. Most people would correct that statement and ask, don't you mean you hated her. You see, my sister is dead and had been these past twenty years. Yes she is dead but what no one knows about outside of me is that long dead sister was killed by me. Allow me to take you back in time and tell you my story.

***

Kelly sat on the side of my bed. She was such a cute little girl, or at least that's what everyone was always saying. Personally I just thought she was a real pain in my butt. I had hated the idea of her being around from the moment my parents had told me I was going to have a baby brother or sister. I didn't want one. I had thought I was the only child my parents needed and the only one they should want. I saw no reason for them to bring another kid into the house that would do nothing but cause problems and take away from me. I was the important one after all.

"Terri did you hear me?" Kelly interrupted her older sister's train of thought.

"What Kelly?"

"Do you think Mom and Dad will let me go on the big water slide at High Water?" Kelly was pulling at some of the fringe on one of her sister's throw pillows on her sister's bed as she asked.

"Stop that you little twit before you rip it open, oh and while you're at it get off my bed. You're wrinkling the covers." Terri had walked over and jerked the pillow from her younger sister's hand throwing it up on the bed. The little pillow was really of no importance to Terri but it was hers and Kelly had no right to even lay her hands on anything of hers.

Undeterred by her sister's annoyed response she continued. "Well do you think they will let me?"

"No they won't Kelly. Even if they were willing to allow you to go on the big slides the people at that stupid water park won't. You're too young and too short. They can't allow you to get on the big slides because if you fall off Mom and Dad could sue them for something. Will you please just get out of my room? You know I hate you being in here?" Terri just wanted her little sister to go away and she didn't mean just leave her room.

"OK, I'm going. I don't know why you have to be so mean Terri. I was just asking." Kelly left Terri's room crying.

Oh crap, Mom and Dad are going to hear that little brat crying which meant one or both would soon be in her room getting on to her again. They spent a lot of time getting on to her over that brat ever since they brought her home. Yep, she could hear her dad coming down the hall.

"Kelly, what did you say to your sister this time?" John stood in the doorway of his oldest daughter's bedroom glaring at Terri.

Terri put on her sweetest, most innocent face before answering her father. "Dad she asked if you and Mom would let her go on the big slides at the waterpark and I told her you guys couldn't. I simply let her know that the park wouldn't let you. I didn't mean to make her cry. You know she cries at anything I say to her, she is still such a baby about everything."

"Well honey you are going to have to take it easy with your little sister. You know she adores you and I know she seems to be overly sensitive to what you say to her. She's in her room now crying her eyes out. When she ask you something like that just tell her to ask us and that way you don't have to deal with things you shouldn't have to. Just wait, one day before too much longer you'll turn around and Kelly will be a teenager. I'm sure once she gets a little older she won't be such a baby to you."

"I know Daddy and I'm really sorry for making her cry, I honestly didn't mean to." Terri gave her dad the sweetest smile she had in her reserves and was rewarded with his.

"That's OK honey. You have all your things together for tomorrow?" John looked at his beautiful daughter and his pride for his oldest child evident all over his face. He was often torn between his oldest and youngest daughters when things got sticky between them. There seemed to have been more and more of that lately. He often did understand why Kelly was running to him and Cheryl over something she claimed her older sister had done. However he nor his wife had ever seen Terri do anything to hurt her younger sister, quite the opposite. Terri seemed to always be taking care of her Kelly almost to the point that she seemed to obsess over the safety of her younger sibling.

"Yes Daddy I'll send her to you and Mom next time. I'm really truly sorry for making Kelly cry. I'll go apologize to her now." Terri again gave her father that winning smile she reserved just for moments like this.

John left Terri's room and headed back down the hallway the way he had come. Terri went to her door to check to see if her dad really was out of sight. She walked down the hall in the opposite direction toward her sister's bedroom. That bedroom was still a thorn in Terri's side. It had been her room until her parents had made the announcement about the new baby. She had been told they were moving her down the hall to the other bedroom because they would need the baby close to them. Never mind the fact it was the bigger bedroom as well as being closest to her parents. That room also had the bigger closet and Terri really needed that now with all the things she had. Of course, if it hadn't been for Kelly she would have a lot more than she did. That little bitch seemed to always be taking things away from her. Her old room, stuff her parents would have been able to buy for her if it hadn't been for Kelly, not to mention her parent's undivided attention.

Terri slipped quietly up to the partially opened door remaining out of sight of her mom and younger sister. From her vantage point she could hear her mother consoling the bitch. Careful Terri you might slip out with that little nickname for the brat in front of your parents. One day she thought to herself she would be able to openly express what she really felt for the little bit... and changed her line of thought and went to her stand by name for Kelly and substituted brat.

"Now Kelly you know Terri didn't mean to hurt your feelings." Cheryl was still trying to console her youngest child.

"But I want to go on the big slides Mom." Kelly thought she was big enough to go on the slides with her sister.

"Well honey they won't allow it until you're bigger and we can't go against the rules." Sometimes Cheryl's patience was put to the test with Kelly. She seemed to be so immature for a child of her age. She was always crying over something her sister said or for not getting her way. She really hadn't had this kind of trouble with Terri at this age. Oh when they first brought Kelly home there had been some initial incidents but Cheryl had marked them up to the upheaval in Terri's routine. Terri seemed to settle in to having the baby in the house pretty quickly and Terri had been a lot younger than Kelly at the time. Of course gaging Kelly by her older sister wasn't fair she knew. No two people were alike and Kelly and Terri were definitely different.

As Terri listened to her mom talking to her sister a much more natural smile slipped across her face. This was a smile of someone who was cunning and manipulative. She had been building an image for years of her sister being a whiner and spoiled cry baby. As usual her mom was taken in by the persona she had cultivated over time.

"Well if I can't go on the big slides I don't want to go." Kelly didn't say this in the shrill voice of a temper tantrum but in the soft hurt voice of a little girl but Cheryl had only heard the part about if she couldn't have her way then she would spoil it for everyone.

"Kelly we are not going to stay home and keep Terri and the rest of us from going. I plan on the rest of us having a good time whether you do or not because you can't have what you want."

Terri relished the tone in her mother's voice. She knew that if her plan was going to work then she would have been better off to encourage her sister regarding the slides but she really needed to reinforce this spoiled brat thing with her parents. So she had gone with making the little twit cry. She didn't quite know how she would pull everything off but she was certain she could manage somehow.

***

Terri woke the next morning to a bright sunny day. She had been keeping an eye on the weather and knew it was supposed to be a perfect day but she was smart enough to know things had a way of changing when you least expected. She was smarter than most twelve year old girls and she made a point of learning from adults about the way things worked. She had not only been watching the weather she made a point of finding out everything she could about what was going on with that damn water park. She really had no desire to go there and anyone smart enough to pay attention to what was happening there wouldn't have wanted to go right now either. The place was going through some renovations and a lot of the major attractions were closed at the moment. That's why she had suggested going in the first place. A lot of the things that kids her age would want to do were closed down and probably roped off. It being a Sunday it was unlikely that anyone would be working on them so she felt sure she would have free reign in accomplishing her task.

***

Terri's parents were preoccupied with something over at the concession stand and she finally saw her opportunity to get Kelly away from them.

"Kelly quick, while Mom and Dad are busy why don't you and I take a chance on that Monster?" Terri knew that the Monster was the biggest water slide in the place and she had checked it out earlier. No one was working on it and the people at the park hadn't bothered to put anyone by it to keep people from taking advantage of climbing the steep stairs to the top.

"Won't Mom and Dad be mad if we do?" Kelly looked at the Monster with pure longing.

"If we hurry we can get one good run down it before they even find out. I think it stinks to come here and not get a chance to have a least one go at it." Terri could see Kelly inching closer in the direction of the slide.

"You really think I'm big enough?" Kelly looked up at her sister with her big hopeful eyes.

"Sure I do. I think adults are way too protective and just don't want to let any of us kids do anything fun because we might get hurt." Terri reach a hand out as if to beckon Kelly on.

Kelly went to take her sister's hand.

"No. You walk out in front and I'll hang back a little so I can keep an eye on Mom and Dad. We don't want them to catch us and stop us from having some fun now do we?" Terri thought she had set the trap up pretty well.

"OK," was all Kelly said as she headed to the large slide.

Terri allowed her little sister get a few yards ahead of her before she followed her. She wanted to be able to say she saw Kelly take off by herself and she followed her to keep an eye on her. She would always be able to say she was trying to stop her and bring her back if she started to get into something. She put what she knew was a concerned look on her face as she kept her sister in her sights never getting so close that it would look like she was actually with her. When Kelly got closer to the Monster Terri picked up her pace and went around the large slide on the other side so no one would see her when she got Kelly to the steps that led up to the top of the slide.

When Terri came around from the opposite direction to where Kelly was her little sister was looking back the way she had come.

"Over here Kelly"

"Where did you go?" The apprehension in both Kelly's eyes and voice was obvious.

"Just making sure Mom and Dad didn't see us. Come on, the sooner we get to the top the better. Once we're up there even if they see us they can't stop us from sliding down." Terri held up the rope for her little sister to get past her and motioned for her sister to start up the steps first. Terri looked up the square framed steps that led to the top. The steps went up so far and then there was a small landing and then you made a forty five degree turn and went up a little way further. You would come to another platform and again make that same turn. This went on and on till you reached the top. Terri had read that at the top it was eighty feet high and was considered the tallest in their state.

Kelly hesitated for a moment before she started up the steps. For some reason she was having second thoughts about this whole thing now. As Kelly looked up at the steps they seemed to go on and on.

As they got closer to the top of the stairs Kelly noticed that her sister seemed to be crowding in closer and closer to her. They were almost to the top and with each step she became more and more apprehensive. What if she gets caught? She knew her parents would be so mad that she and Terri had even thought of doing something like this. Kelly suddenly stopped near the very top and took a tight hold on the railing.

"What are you doing you little twit? Come on we're almost to the top." Terri was anxious to get this over with and was looking forward to playing the part of the grieving older sister who had tried desperately to save her.

"I don't think we should do this Terri." Kelly continued to maintain her strong hold on the railing.

"Oh come on you little baby. You wanted to do this and I've seen to it that you could. Now get moving." Terri had been holding on to the railing with one hand but now she let it go to grab her sister and push her the rest of the way to the top. She had to get her to the top to make it all go right.

"I don't think so Terri."

Kelly had drawn her left leg up closer in to her body as Terri reached for her. That was the moment she struck. She kicked out at her sister with all her strength. The look of total surprise that crossed Terri's face as her little sister landed a hard blow to the middle of her chest was soon replaced by one of sheer terror as she felt herself go first soaring backwards and then hitting the railing to the first landing behind her. She hit that bar of wood that served as a barrier to keep people from falling off the seventy foot landing and in that moment she knew why this slide had been closed. The railing broke with the weight of her body hitting it and she went into a free fall to the ground seventy feet below. The last thing that went through her mind before her head hit the ground was the satisfied grin on her little sister's face as she had watched her flying through the air.

Kelly had started screaming almost as soon as her sister had as she went flying backwards into the empty space high above the ground below. Kelly had known all along what had been on her older sister's mind. Terri might have been able to fool their parents but she hadn't been able to fool Kelly. Terri had made the mistake of assuming her little sister was stupid and easily fooled but in fact Kelly had been a little wiser than her big sister. Terri had prided herself on how she was able to pull the wool over their parent's eyes but she had never stopped to think that John and Cheryl had given birth to two children who were a little smarter than most and neither on had been born with what people would call a conscience. Both of their daughter would have been labeled sociopaths if either had ever been seen by a professional but the truth was far worse than that. Both these girls had been born evil. The difference between pure evil and a sociopath was knowing how to hide it from the rest of the world from birth. It wasn't hard to understand why like Terri, Kelly had always resented having another kid in the house and she too had been looking for a way to correct that problem.

Terri had thought she had been so smart in thinking she could just get Kelly to the top then push her over the edge. She really should have done a little more research on why this slide was closed. They had no intention of repairing it, they were going to tear it down with the intention of building a new one. It would seem that the wood in this one had rotted and they knew there was a danger of the railings giving out should someone put too much force on them. Kelly guessed Terri flying through the air and hitting the railing like she had provided enough force for what she had been hoping for. Even through her continued screams born from self-preservation and the desire to put on a good front she was able to smile at what she had accomplished.

***

Yes, she had gotten away with it. She had told her parents that Terri had taken her to the Monster slide because she had made her cry. She had told her parents that she was in front of her sister, which was true, so she didn't see what happened but heard Terri scream and she turned around and Terri was falling backwards. She didn't know what happened. She had gotten so much attention and even though it was never said in anger her parents had always said Terri should have known better. They often told people they were so thankful they hadn't lost both of their girls.

Her parents never had more children and Kelly remained the center of her parent's attention. When they died in a car accident a couple of years ago, with a little help of course, she had inherited everything they had. Here she was in her late twenties and sitting pretty good, financially. So she should be tickled, right? Well she had been up till last night.

What changed? She had a little visitor. It would appear that Terri decided she didn't like the way things turned out. Terri had informed her that it was payback time and she planned on taking her time in collecting. Now Kelly lay in this hospital bed with a broken arm and a large gash in her right side. Terri had put in her first appearance at the head of the steps in Kelly's new home. Kelly had been climbing the steps and looked up and there she was. She had made her little speech and as Kelly had turned around to try and get back down the stairs she felt a force in the center of her back, she went flying head first down the stairs. Kelly had landed on a large porcelain vase that stood at the bottom of the steps. She lay in a bloody heap looking up as Terri had stood over her laughing. Just before Terri faded out she made a final statement before Kelly passed out from the pain.

"I'm just getting started little sister."

# Tom Awoke

### J. A. Kyser

### Tom Awoke

Tom awoke this morning, not to the alarm, to a movement as if someone had just climbed out of bed. The blanket had been thrown back and the sheets crumpled. His first thought was Nina had just got up. He still hadn't wrapped his mind around what had happened. He still woke up most mornings expecting her to be there; thinking it was all a nightmare. All that took just seconds to go through his mind. It had probably been Kaitlyn who was just 4. Emily, who was 7, tried acting more grown up and was the bigger sister. She felt she had to be strong for Kaitlyn. Emmy was too grown up to crawl in daddy's bed.

Tom sat up, he figured it would be a good idea to check on the girls and make sure they were OK. Once again the girls were sharing a room. When she had turned 6, Emmy had said she was too big to share a room with a baby. Since Nina had gone, Emmy had become very protective of her little sister. Emmy was so much like Nina. Straight blonde hair and blue eyes that sparkled like ice. She was tall and thin for her age, she seemed to flow when she moved. Nina had taken ballet when she was younger. She and Tom had discussed letting Emmy try. She also: had to be on time for everything, not 1 minute late. If she happened to arrive late to wherever she had to be, it threw off her whole day, just like her mother.

Kaitlyn was much more like Tom. She had reddish-blonde hair that no matter how many times you brushed it, curls went everywhere as soon as she shook her head. Emmy had gotten very proficient at putting it in a ponytail for her. Kaitlyn also had Tom's eyes. Hazel that changed color according to her mood. She was a bit clumsy, but scrapes and cuts didn't faze her. She would rather climb a tree than play dolls.

Both girls were wrapped up in their blankets. Emmy hugging her stuffed dog tightly, the one Tom had brought home for her birthday last year. If it had been either one of the girls in his bed, you couldn't tell now. They both looked as if they hadn't so much as twitched in hours. Maybe there would be enough time to sneak in another hour's sleep. During the day it felt like he was always in a fog. Watching them sleep, he got a hitch in his chest. He loved them both so much. They had grown so and he had missed most of it. He felt a rush of guilt. Maybe if he had spent more time at home he would have noticed a change in Nina.

Tom still couldn't believe that Nina had left them like this. He needed her so much. She was his rock. She took care of everything. All he did was bring home the money. He should have known something was wrong. They used to be so close, but ever since he had taken this job 2 years ago, he didn't notice much of anything at home. Always before he could tell if something was bothering her. Even working so many hours; he still should have noticed something that would have driven her to this extreme choice. Was she lonely? Did she feel like she had too much on her shoulders? As he thought back to that day, he got a lump in his throat and an ache in his chest. He felt lost and alone. Was that how his wife of 10 years felt? Was it his fault? Tom would ask the obligatory "How was your day?" She would always say. "Fine." Hell, she could have said, "I'm on fire." and he wouldn't have noticed. He was so wrapped up in his work he never laughed and barely smiled anymore. Nina had been different though. She never seemed unhappy. This marvelous woman loved life, loved her husband, most of all she loved her children more than anything. As their mother she would lay down her life for them.

***

It was a normal day. Nina was already dressed for work. The girls all pretty for their day at school. Nina was just waiting for them to finish their breakfast so she could drop them off at the bus stop. As usual Tom was in a rush and pecked each cheek before running out the door. The same routine they had followed for almost two years. Maybe she had gotten bored with her life. He could have done more. Made a phone call at lunch, left her a note to find when she got home. Taken her and the girls somewhere on the weekends instead of pulling out his work and going over it again. No wonder he felt guilty. Even with all that, it was not in her personality to take the easy way out.

The rest of the day was a blur. Everywhere was cutting back. People were being let go every day, Tom was no exception. He had to fight daily to keep his place at work. Before the end of that day he had lost the fight and his job. He wasn't going to tell Nina right away. Why worry her? Maybe this is what they needed. Tom hadn't been around for his family much. All he thought about was work. Getting a bigger office, a big raise, making his family proud. Taking care of his family financially. Maybe what they needed more was daddy being around. Tom had more skills than just numbers. If they cut back in a few places, daddy could work a regular eight hours and be home for dinner.

Nina had thought Tom was going in late that next day. Yeah, permanently late. He got dressed soon after and went to the office to wave goodbyes and get that last check. He deposited it in their joint account and headed home.

Tom had come home that last day and thought he should do something nice for his wife. Something around the house always needed fixing; he always seemed to never be around. Well, that was going to change too. He wasn't going to lose his wife and family over another job like this one. Tom had worked late so many nights and left his family to fend for themselves that eventually he would have lost them anyway.

***

Things got a little clouded after that. It seemed like that a lot lately. As if he were in a fog and could barely see what was going on around him. At Nina's showing, the doctor said that was normal after a traumatic experience. Tom had gotten the feeling that most of the people at the wake blamed him in some way. They barely looked him in the eyes, let alone spoke directly to him. He supposed they were trying to make sense of it all just like him. And maybe they did blame him, just like he blamed himself.

Tom had gotten pretty lax in caring for the girls. Emmy and Kaitlyn had started dressing themselves for school. He knew Emmy was helping Kaitlyn, Emmy had turned into a mini mommy. She was doing a wonderful job. Both girls were always groomed better than Tom could have done himself. As a father, he really needed to come out of this fog and spend more time with them. If not, he would have the same guilt from missing them grow up as he had by not telling Nina every day how much he loved her. They needed him more now than ever before and Tom needed them. Every morning he kissed both of them good-bye and told them he loved them. Every morning Emmy and Kaitlyn always replied, "I'll love you forever, daddy." They ran for the door so as not to miss their ride. One of Tom and Nina's mutual friends had been picking them up and dropping them off, but at that moment he couldn't remember just who it was.

Tom headed upstairs to start his shower; it looked as if someone had already been in the bathroom. The floor was damp and the blow dryer was lying out. He must be walking in his sleep. Trying to set things up to make it seem as if Nina was still there. Sometimes he could almost feel her presence. Missing her so much he was trying to keep her essence alive. He should have told her more often how much she meant to him. Maybe after he checked on the girls he did fall asleep for a bit and was sleepwalking. Things had been pretty hazy since she had gone.

***

When Tom came home that last day, he knew exactly what job to start with. For months, Nina had been complaining about the ceiling fan in the bedroom. She would get hot at night and the fan couldn't be turned on without waking the whole house. He grabbed his toolbox, a ladder, switched off the circuit to the bedroom and was on his way. Tom wasn't much of a handy-man or very graceful either. He could do the small repairs like this, but that was about it. The fan was an easy job, just a loose screw. The ladder was getting a bit rickety and it wasn't really tall enough for the high ceilings in their new home. He needed to buy a new one if he was going to be doing home repairs. Just his luck he would fall and break his neck. Better safe than sorry, funny though, that would sure take care of all his troubles right now. Tom had made sure his wife and daughters would have no worries if anything ever happened to him. He even had an accident clause that would double his insurance. Just a passing thought.

Tom heard the back door slam and high heels walking across the tile in the kitchen and through the hall to the bottom of the stairs. Who in the hell would just walk into his home? He started down the ladder when he heard his name being called out. Nina. It was Nina. His heart skipped a beat. It had all been a dream. He had been given another chance. He felt warm all over. All the things he had been ruminating about for the last few weeks; now he could really make it happen. His mind was going 100 mph and his heart almost as fast. He was so excited, he wasn't paying attention and his foot slipped on the next rung, then his whole leg followed. He started falling backward in slow motion. NO! No, no, no. As his upper body fell, his back hit the ladder and the back of his head hit the floor, his neck at an odd angle. As Tom tried to squeeze enough air out of his lungs to call out to her; he heard an ancient, raspy voice whisper in his ear, "Now a deal is a deal. I clearly heard you say you would sell your soul to make sure your family was well taken care of." The dry voice croaked. "I took you up on that offer." Tom couldn't take any air into his lungs, he could hear the blood rushing in his ears; the lub, lub of his heart slowing down and then nothing. He never uttered another word. At least not in this world.

***

Tom awoke this morning, not to the alarm, to a movement as if someone had just climbed out of bed.

# Hers

### Patricia Knight

### Hers

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

She turned the television up a notch.

Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.

She turned it up again.

Taptaptaptap.

Before she could turn the show up louder the rain began to come down hard.

She looked out the window and sighed. She hated the rain. Looming across the street was the saddest grand home she had ever seen. The old couple that lived in that home were oblivious to how derelict it had become. The roof over the front porch sagged in the rain. More pieces of paint washed away with each gentle rain, much less a deluge like this one. That house was the reason she stayed in this town, there was not a lot of diversions for someone like her. If boating, fishing, and hunting were your hobbies this part of the state really was paradise. Unfortunately she preferred music, lights, and art.

A warning flashed across the screen, it was a flood warning.

"Ya think we might flood?" She asked the weather man sarcastically.

It had been raining for the last fourteen hours nonstop. At times it came down light but mostly it came down like it was now. The rain gauge in her front yard had been dumped twice today, sixteen inches so far.

She went to the bathroom and took out her raincoat. She had put it there earlier so that it could dry without making too much of a mess. She pulled on her black rain boots and then her gray raincoat. She needed to check on them again before it got too dark. She stood on her plain porch and looked across at the old Queen Anne style home and sighed. Between the two houses there was normally two sidewalks, two ditches, and a narrow two-lane road. Now there was just a river that went almost to the top of her boots.

Inside the old home was an almost equally old couple. The man was 103 years old and his 'young bride' as he called her was 96. They were a stubborn pair. But they took a liking to the thin, sarcastic woman, and were the only people in the neighborhood to make her feel welcome. She had no family, growing up in foster care did not make her the most social of people, and they were as close as she wanted to get to having a family.

Jessica made slow progress as she waded through the high water. Her small hand quickly grabbed the couple's gate. There was a dip in the walkway and Jessica carefully stretched so miss it. The old porch sagged under her minimal weight as she caught her breath and calmed down. She knocked on the heavy front door and waited.

She knocked again.

Still no answer.

She walked down the steps and eased her way along the side of the yard, keeping one hand on the house. The yard was uneven and several times she stepped down into a hole and cold, dirty water rushed into her boots. By the time she reached the back porch she had used every curse word she knew more than once.

The lake behind the house was much closer than usual. In fact, it was only a few feet from the bottom step. There was usually a good one hundred feet between the back porch and the edge of the lake. The piers of each house along the lake were gone. Boats floated around the lake, looking like the floating ducks in a carnival game, bobbing up and down with no one to control them.

She knocked on the back door and found it unlocked, as usual. "Charles? Diane?" She called loudly into the house as she stepped in.

"UP HERE!" It was Charles.

"Are you two alright?" She asked as she eased her way towards the stairs. The floor was soft in places and the water pooling under the building was certainly not helping.

Diane stood at the top of the stairs. "Of course we are hon, come on up."

"Why don't you two come stay with me?"

"And leave this palace?" She waved her hand dismissively.

"Diane the lake is almost up to the porch."

Charles joined his wife. "I know, isn't it amazing? I've never seen anything like this before."

"Charles, Diane, please, just come stay at my house for the night. I'll feel better knowing you two are safe."

Diane laughed. "This old house has protected us for so long, what could a little rain do?"

"Really, Jessica, we're fine. I'm sure the rain will stop eventually."

"Are you sure?" She asked.

Charles put his arm around his wife. "We'll be fine. I'll keep my young bride safe. You can come see us in the morning. We'll make you some eggs and bacon."

"With coffee and toast," Diane added with a smile.

Jessica nodded, a lock of short black hair peeked out from under her hood, "Are you sure? I don't mind. I have an extra bedroom already fixed up." She smiled warmly. She wasn't much on family, but over the years these two had become almost precious to her.

"We'll be fine."

She sighed and nodded, "Okay. I'll see you later then."

It was almost a week later when the policeman, Officer Matthew Moore, knocked on her door.

Jessica opened it, "Can I help you?"

"Miss Cravin?"

She nodded.

"I need you to come with me. We believe we  may have found Mr. and Mrs. Roberts."

"Are they alright? Did they say where they've been?" She asked quickly.

He shifted uncomfortably on her porch, "They aren't alive ma'am."

She grabbed the door frame to keep from collapsing.

Officer Moore reached out to steady  her. "I'm sorry, I'm not very good at breaking news like that to people."

She looked up at him with her large brown eyes. "Sir, there's no good way to tell someone something like that."

He nodded.

"Let me get my purse."

Two days later she sat in a room with two other men. One was the pastor who went every week to the Robert's home. The other was a lawyer. The will was read and it was as Charles and Diane had told her it would be. The house and property were hers along with one half of their money. The other half of the money went to the church.

That evening she stood on the back porch overlooking the still swollen lake. Part of the backyard was visible again, but everything still smelled like the lake. She brought a folding chair from her yard and was sitting on it here. She had wanted this house since she first saw it, five years before. Now she smiled, all her hard work and waiting had paid off.

After the sun set she walked into her new kitchen and smiled. By the time she was done repairing the old home, no one would ever guess just how far she had gone to secure it.

She knelt down and touched the newest soft spot on the floor and let her fingers trace over the rips in the ancient linoleum from the animal's claws. Alligators lived in almost every body of water in Louisiana, and the lake behind her new home was no exception. She had seen them when she had left that night when Charles and Diane had refused to go with her. It was them that gave her the idea. Later that night, after it was dark, she made her way through the water. This time she was careful to wear taller boots.

Diane had come down first and slipped in the water. Her old white haired head had hit the counter and moments later her frail body, bottom first, and hit the floor. It was Jessica's scream that had brought Charles hobbling down the stairs at almost breakneck speed. He slipped in the same spot but caught himself before falling.

Jessica was standing there, hands over her mouth, staring down at the floating body of Diane.

"What happened? What did you do?" He rushed towards her, his hands balled into fits.

She looked up and saw the old man just before he punched her in the chest. She shoved him hard, knocking him back against the table. And before she could stop herself she grabbed a heavy cast iron frying pan off the stove and hit him, not in the head, but in the ribs.

He doubled over in pain, his hands grabbing his side.

She hit him again, this time on his back.

Charles fell on his side, sputtering as the water rushed into his mouth and up his nose.

She put the frying pan back on the stove and quickly moved so that her foot held him face down in the water.

He struggled for a few moments,  then he went still.

Jessica kept her foot there. She looked inside her shirt and found where he had hit her. There was only a faint mark from his uncut nails through her shirt. She looked out the back porch, her flashlight reflecting off the eyes she was waiting for. They had moved closer, but would still need some encouragement to do what she needed them to do.

She pulled on the back door, knowing the place where the door always stuck on the floor. She pushed Diane's body so that it floated towards the eyes. Charles' body floated easily behind Diane's. She wasn't sure the alligators would do what she wanted; she didn't care, she was tired of waiting. Diane and Charles tangled against the door frame, the water pushing and pulling on them. In the bright beam of her flashlight she could see the water turning red around them. Diane's head must have gotten cut when she hit the counter.

Jessica moved slowly towards the front door, opened it, turned the lock in the knob, and then pulled it firmly but quietly behind her. She made her way back to her house as quickly as possible without turning on her flashlight. She ignored the bumps against her legs as she walked through the almost knee high water. Once inside her house she put her raincoat and boots back in the bathtub to dry, put her wet clothes in the washer, and went to bed.

Now the old home was hers and she smiled at that thought. It was hers.

# The God Strain

### Gary Jefferies

The God Strain

Smithy was duplicitous. On the one hand he worked in a state of the art research facility combating rare viral diseases. In the other he was where he was now. Fucked up; the equivalent of Frankenstein's monster. The real deal Jekyll or Hyde, take your pick while the world sits on baited breath waiting for the float to sink; buy your front row ticket now while you still can. Shops will be closing and not reopening any time soon.

The lab was a high security, need to know and dealing with virulent flu strains that seemed intent on defeating anything his team threw at them. One in particular was almost showing signs of sentience and mutating before the vaccine even went live. Like it knew, read his mind, the coding sequence necessary to turn things round and undo months of work. Smithy dwelt long on this one. He called it the God Flu. Self-adapting sub-strain of a SARS like flu bug, except it dealt in death, not just sometimes, every damn time.

They'd picked it up a month previous after a strain appeared on a plaque that wasn't supposed to be there. Within days it had wiped out the surrounding competition and sat staring back through the isolation booth. A red agar eye studying them studying it. That was when things should have been incinerated. Science is curious, so the moment passed and things got worse.

Animal testing delivered consistently poor prognoses; forty-eight hour incubation then system wide collapse, game over within three days; no variation. The end of day's contagion where judgement is passed.

Time and again he shook his head on this one, pushing up his spectacles and rubbing tired eyes that hid a mind full of anxiety. If it ever got out the damn thing was indiscriminate. That it would infect humans he was in no doubt and the result of that....he refused to think about. Sanity was fragile and too much ruminating over morals of his employ would lead to a breakdown.

Up until last Tuesday, and apart from the new virus, all was well in his world. That was when he began reading King's The Stand; when conscience began to eat into what remained of a mind that...maybe Oppenheimer felt the same when the nuclear bomb went off.

_I am become death, the destroyer of worlds._

But for a roll of the dice civilization could already be a dead wasteland and what he was doing now would never have mattered.

He could feel self-justification eroding away as he read deeper. A mistake and poof....society goes to pot , everyone panics and almost everyone dies. Either which way the end of days and, for those that survived, a new Dark Age. Hell, there were already loads of TV series and films showcasing it. Books like the one he was reading. How many warnings did folk  like him need for Christ's sake? That was about the time the voice appeared. A deep resonance grating at the back of his mind.

_What's it feel like to grow the God Flu?_

Smithy looked up from the book and frowned before shaking his head and stared out of the windscreen at a carpark basking in full sun. A lunch time break from the rat race and the unnamed contagion. God Flu.

The voice spoke up, again. _Well, you ready to do this Smithy?_

This time he felt the spittle evaporate in his mouth and hairs rising on his neck. He listened fearing his under conscious was tripping on the moral debate that haunted his nightmares. Job versus animal testing; playing with viruses that could cause mayhem if containment failed or someone did something real stupid.

What, like make the God Virus?

This time he spoke up, "Yup, I guess so."

Secure is it? Deep in your bunker of death.

He thought of Oppenheimer. Atoms and viruses, both very small and yet capable of so much.

"Clearly." Conviction was lacking. Wasn't talking to yourself a sign of madness?

You do know you're outside the building right?

The book was open at chapter 23, the magician, man in black, all hail the Crimson King. Coincidence maybe, but that was fiction.

"Yes, and what of it?"

What if you've got forty eight hours left with life as you know it?

Anxiety was threading its way through his veins.

"Not possible," he said to the empty car, "it's isolated and the lab would lock down."

It's God Flu Smithy. You don't even know how it got there.

"And you do I suppose?"

He took a moment out looking at the greying hairs reflecting back from the vanity mirror. Dark rings under slung his eyes while fingers drummed on the steering wheel. The book now rested on the passenger seat. Who was the runner in there again? Campion. That was it, worked in military germ warfare lab where things went wrong. The similarities struck him as perverse. Safe while it's safe but when it's not safe, people are people; they run and what runs with them.... _I am become death_. Oppenheimer in action.

He shook his head. Who the hell was he talking to anyway? His own conscience drip feeding the worst case scenario. There were safeguards for that though, hermetic seals, positive air pressure, micro-filtration systems and suited and booted with respirators. Any breach and everything closed automatically. If you were in you were in, simple; infected or not infected you weren't going anywhere until the all clear was, well, cleared . He needed air. A quick stroll down the sea front ought to do the trick. Waves were calming. The soft wash as they broke, the sound of gulls and smell of sea spray.

A long haired youth rested on his elbows over the hood of a beat up ford escort. He was eyeing the breakers and sighing.

"No good man, no good at all."

Smithy paused, "You talking to me?"

"Anyone who's listening dude, no rides here." He looked glum as a hand touched the underside of the board resting on a roof rack.

Shall we send him to where the breakers never stop?

Smithy ignored the inner voice. Breakers were in one of King's books too. The nuance was fitting. Breakers for a breaking world, _the destroyer of worlds_.  He shook his head trying to dislodge the distraction.

"Ever tried Australia?" he  asked. Although why he said it was something he dwelt on later.

The youth stood up, hair blowing in the wind as a smile crossed his face.

"Idea, I could be in Melbourne tomorrow and riding waves by nightfall."

Smithy noticed a vacancy drift across his face between him standing up and speaking. _Must be on something,_ he thought.

_Like God Flu?_ Interjected  the voice.

"You serious?" he asked.

"Why not?" replied the youth, "life's short and the world could end next week."

"What makes you say that?"

"God Flu man; if it hits then everyone dies and I'm going out on a wave."

Smithy just stared as the surfer cast him a nod as he turned, climbed into his car and headed off down the sea front. Mental calculations trickled through his mind. Forty eight hours, two airports and a million other encounters in London alone. He felt hot. How did he know about God Flu and was that sheer coincidence? The odds were staggering.

Not really Smithy. Not from where I sit.

He stared out across the ocean fearing his mind was breaking like the waves pounding the shoreline. "You're not real and I've got to get back to work."

As real as the plaque that watched you staring in disbelief?

He turned and found himself walking to the bus station, but not knowing why.

"Do you blame me? It shouldn't be possible. New strains like that can't just appear spontaneously." He lacked conviction because it had. Just like that, the red eye looking at him looking at it.

_God Flu man_. The voice mimicked the surfer.

Smithy started. "No!"

It takes less than a minute to upload.

"Upload?" He entered the terminal. Twenty or so passengers milled about either waiting for a bus to somewhere, pondering timetables or buying tickets. A few pensioners smiled at him as he walked past. Smithy joined a queue not knowing why. A child, holding her mother's hand looked up at him wide eyed and scared.

Twenty meter radius Smithy. How many you walked past already? How many has the  hippy found and how many have the found, themselves, found?

The queue dismantled, and he found himself at the kiosk staring vacantly at the woman behind the counter.

"Where to?" she asked.

Smithy didn't know. He didn't even know why he was here in the first place and not back in the lab staring at the circle of red. A red that was imprinted in his mind waiting for the dots to job up.

Frowning, he blinked and heard himself say , "Sorry, not today, I've changed my mind."

With that he watched the bus station drift away as he walked back into the sunshine. Distant like, as if he was in a cinema watching a film and detached from the actual scene. Pushed to the back, no longer in the moment. His own thoughts felt fuzzy.

His mind spoke up.

_Are you saying it can infect people merely by being near them without any physical contact or aerosols? No carrier vectors at all?_

This time the answer came from his own mouth.

"You catch on Smithy, smarter than the average bear." There was an underlying sarcasm bleeding from the words.

His own throat felt dry and hot like something had clutched his vocal chords and begun to squeeze.

_But that's_...

"Impossible," the God Flu spoke back, "yes from your biological viewpoint."

Meaning?

"You still don't know where I came from do you?"

_Don't tell me...outer space._ He could still feel pain, and the headache rearing up was becoming a (red) giant.

"Guess you just answered the big question all by yourself."

_Which is?_ Smithy felt sick, his vision distorted and the outside world was far, far away.

"You're not alone."

The sledgehammer hit home and the headache disappeared. He was left in a dark, silent place. Interred in his own mind, unable to reach out. Viruses wrest control of cells and use them to replicate. That was in the basic text books on virology. God Flu took over the body, taking it places with the sole purpose of infecting others, uploading like some computer virus. One purpose, one motive. On and on until there was nothing left to infect.

Why?

"We need a new home Smithy, and this house is occupied. Call it an eviction notice and it's just been served."

# The God Strain II

### Gary Jefferies

### The God Strain II

Patrick Wakeman had a past that created the future. Most do, unless the past dominates the future and existing overrides living. The past is dead, long live the past kind of thing. Patrick's was hard only in one aspect. His parents were wealthy, too damn well off if you so please. At school he was the Yes Man. Not because he sucked up but because his dad was a big fan of the band and his name had been influenced, as Patrick found around the age of eleven, by a certain Rick Wakeman. A time when music became the 'in thing' and nicknames dropped the Pat and evolved into the keyboard maestro of the aforementioned group. By sixteen the 'p' had returned and for the next three years he was disaffectionately known as Prick. Not that he minded, too much, because being of wealthy stock he could afford to be laid back about most things.

Nurture was not just educational peer review. Back home his dad knocked around in political circles and was influential in flu pandemic planning. Given recent scares with influenza strains mutating and bird flu kicking up a storm there was a fair amount of head rubbing deep inside government circles playing the what if game. As a sixth form teen doing the three sciences Patrick had been involved in more than one ethical debate with his father about the merits of cordoning off affected areas in a way not too disparate from the handling of foot and mouth outbreaks in cattle. Movement exclusions and funeral pyres. Shoot to kill enforcement and damage limitation. Politicos nicely bunkered up in sterile safe zones with enough dried food and water to last until things has calmed down and burnt out or a viable vaccine found. Mix in the right circles, book your ticket and off we go. Reminded Patrick of Vault Tech in the Fallout series that had occupied him for many a long night gaming.

Ethics and morals flipped over in his mind time and again. Was it right for the very people supposedly safeguarding countries to get free passes just because they slipped up and dropped the ball? Hell, they couldn't even fix roads properly. By nineteen this had festered enough to turn him against the establishment, decide vegetarianism supported his outlook and took up riding the waves on a board at every opportunity. Life was good, parental ties were strained but not severed, university beckoned after a gap year and both Wakeman seniors had concluded it was a phase that would pass once the year was up. Whereupon a politics, philosophy and law degree at King's College in London would sort him out.

Unbeknown to them, Patrick had decided university was not for him and touring as many beaches as possible was the immediate ambition, maybe the odd inspirational smoke and what would be would be.

All these things ran through his mind as he peered across a beach leaning on the bonnet of his rough looking ford escort. A mild onshore breeze slew his hair backwards as he bemoaned an absence of decent waves.

That was when the weird bespectacled man dropped by and a moment when his brain tripped out before he'd subconsciously decided on selling his motor to go surfing in Australia. His last words before driving off had been deep, so deep he felt quite pleased about things and got one up on his old man at the same time.

"God Flu man; if it hits then everyone dies and I'm going out on a wave."

That was an hour ago and while Smithy, the man whose name he didn't know, was passing things on and losing his body in a bus station, Patrick was munching a burger in a well-known fast food chain.

Nice is it Rick?

He sat staring out of the window. The local high street going about its business, cars waiting at a pedestrian crossing while a woman with a pushchair crossed towards the market on the other side. A man leaning off a scaffold frame where the local council was restoring tired masonry on a listed building below which dwelt an unlisted supermarket. It was through this revelry of film reel watching through his eyes that his mind rode breakers over sun glazed beaches overseas. The subconscious voice stirred him up. It felt cold and emotionless.

"What the hell?"

He blinked and looked at the half burger. The first words reaching through his head were when, what, why? He remembered heading off towards his flat to pick up some stuff, what was it? The next minute he was here drifting through burgers when he was a vegetarian, how did that happen?

Easy surfer boy, I brought you here to mingle.

"Say what?"

He dropped the burger into its wrapper. _Wasn't bad though...but meat man...think of the morals and killing for food._ Disgust rippled through him, it was tasty though.

You like to mingle don't you Patrick?

"Just a bit, yes...but crowds no, can't be doing with crowds. It's why the surfs there. To escape and be free with the spray and sea air all around. Such a high man, such a high."

Why he was talking under his breath escaped him. It seemed logical, essential even.

I ain't no man Patrick. They are under a countdown.

"Countdown?"

You said it yourself, to Smithy

"Who the hell is he?"

God Flu man.

He found himself walking along the pavement, not quite remembering leaving the burger joint.

"That vacant looking egg head at the sea front?"

The very same. Patient zero.

"Not following man."

He turned into the train  station, for no apparent reason, and continued walking.

_Your old man worked on flu pandemic planning yes_ , not a question more a statement. _Mix in the right circles and Vault Tech Overseer._

Patrick's mind was feeling hemmed in. The view from his eyes drawing further away and part blurred. Like he was coming down with something.

"Too right, everyone's expendable except those with the golden tickets."

His voice sounded duller, more internalized.

_Doesn't have to be dude, doesn't have to be._ The voice was using his own phrases.

"How do you mean?"

Give your mum a call.

He felt his forehead crease into a frown. Why would I do that?

"To say hi, tell her you love her before it's too late."

_Too late for what though?_ He was aware things had changed. His connection with the world was shutting down. Somewhere in the distance he heard a conversation that he wasn't having.

"Hey mum, how's it hanging?" There was a pause.

"Good, I just wanted to say I love you. Heading away for a few days so thought I'd upload a few thoughts before I left."

_Upload? I don't say upload_ , he thought from deep inside his head. It was dark now and if he had access to anything other than a mind tomb, about now he'd be entering anxiety bordering on serious insanity.

"Sweet," he heard, "say hi to Dad and just go to that, mingle a bit and you'll feel a lot better. Laters."

It went quiet. The sounds of the station disappeared and he heard the street noises; cars, buses, chatter of unseen pedestrians, the wail of a disgruntled toddler. The absence of physical chemistry did not placate the panic now settling in.

What are you?

"I'm the God Flu Rick. You familiar with viruses?"

Only computer ones and what the hell is God Flu?

"Yes, your memories tell the tale, gave me an idea that solved your Vault Tech ticket conundrum."

There was a pause as a door shut and road noise turned into an air conditioning fan.

"Can I help you Sir?" Patrick heard an outsider's voice, male and not too old by the sound of it.

"Yeah man, an hour should be about enough time."

"Very good Sir, take your pick and for a fiver you can have a coffee too."

"Cool, I'll be by the window."

There was some shuffling and the sound of a chair scraping back.

Vault tech conundrum...what's that mean?

"Bit of an upload realization  dude, free range is twenty meters. The phone network reaches wider. Your vaults have just been compromised."

Mum? Please, what's going on, I just wanted to ride some waves, maybe in Australia.

"Your species has a strong sense of fear Rick, very strong. Not to worry though. By tomorrow we'll be surfing almost everywhere, and a few days after that no one will care anymore."

There was some tapping noises in the distance, a keyboard entered his trapped mind and then an image of a café and streams of people walking past the window his possessed body sat at. All pausing briefly with a vacant stare before moving on.

What did you do to mum?

"Same as the lab geek, just passing on some tech; countdowns rolling just enjoy the ride, or...you're a surfer right? Just not quite waves we're riding now dude. With this button we gets to surf the whole world."

Patrick was allowed a visual link to see his own finger hit enter on a keyboard. Above it the graphic user interface went black before strings of ones and zeros flew down the screen. Inside a minute things restored, good as new.

What did you just do?

"I just went viral."

He heard himself laughing, not just any old laugh but a real gut buster.

# The Hunted

### Cathy Pace Matthews

### The Hunted

Kierra had entered the bar a short time ago, found a booth at the rear of the place where she could sit with her back to the wall while facing the door so she could see who came in after her. She was waiting on someone and she wanted to be sure she saw him before he saw her.

"Can I buy you a drink pretty lady?" Kierra had been aware of the man approaching from the right side, lowering her hand to her other side she grasped the handle of one of her many weapons. He had a cock sure grin on his face, from his whole demeanor you could tell he had it in his mind that he was going to make a score here.

"Do you see what is sitting in front of me?" Kierra waited for the idiot to answer.

"Well it looks like a drink sweetheart." The man seemed to stagger a bit.

"Does it look like it needs a refill?" Again Kierra waited for the moron to answer.

"Well I just thought you might like to have another after you finish that one honey." The man's smile wavered a bit.

"Look cupcake, if I need you to buy me a drink I'll ring your bell, until then, I suggest you give me a wide berth." Kierra delivered this statement in what sounded almost like a growl.

The man started to put the arrogant bitch in her place but the look in her eyes told him that this was someone he didn't want to cross. He didn't know why but he was a little intimidated by her.

"Sorry ma'am." The man said before turning away heading back to his drinking buddies.

Shortly after the guy with the drink offer had made his departure the man Kierra was waiting for walked in. Everyone in the bar turned around to look at him. To say that Malcolm was ugly was putting it mildly. He wasn't just ugly, he was damn right scary.

Malcolm stood almost seven feet tall with a girth so wide he almost had to turn sideways to get in the door. Kierra almost smiled at the thought of Malcolm trying to get himself in the booth across from her.

Malcolm noticed Kierra at the back of the bar. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the base of her neck. The leather jacket fit her to perfection and her fair skin seemed to almost glow even in the dark light of the bar. Malcolm made his way to Kierra.

"You had to get a booth girl?" Malcolm maneuvered his excessive size into the bench across from Kierra.

"I didn't know when you would get here and I don't like leaving my back open." She looked around the bar noticing the idiot from before staring at her and her companion with a look of disbelief.

"A friend of yours?" Malcolm had noticed the man staring at them.

"Just a drunk who thought he was cute. He left as quickly as he came up to me." She turned her attention back to Malcolm.

"Do I need to walk you out when you leave?" Malcolm knew the kind of guy that was staring at Kierra, he also knew he was the kind that would lay in wait for a woman to take her by surprise.

"I can handle anything that comes up Malcolm, you know that." Kierra was a little offended by the idea that he thought she might need a knight in shining armor to come to her rescue. She had to hold back the smile at the image that brought to mind. Kierra couldn't imagine seeing Malcolm in anything other than black and that didn't often coincide with anything shining.

"I know you can take care of a creep like that, I just wanted to watch you do it." Malcolm was smiling at the thought.

"Yes but if you walk me out then he won't pull any shit. The result of that is I would be deprived of ripping his family jewels from his body then ramming them down his throat." Now even Kierra was smiling which was rare.

"So what's the deal Kierra?" Malcolm wanted to know why she had called him out of the blue wanting to meet away from their normal places.

"I'm looking for someone and I need something from you." Kierra hated to tell Malcolm what she was up to.

"What are you going after girl?" He didn't have to be told is wasn't human.

Kierra took a photo out of her jacket pocket, laid it face down on the table sliding it over to Malcolm.

When Malcolm turned the photo over he nearly broke the table when he tried to stand up.

"The hell you are."

"I have to Malcolm."

Kierra had placed a hand over Malcolm's hoping to settle him down. Everyone in the bar had turned their attention back to Malcolm, as a result also to her. Kierra didn't like it when she drew attention. It never occurred to her that her very appearance was enough to do that on its own.

"What the hell do you mean you have to Kierra? You don't have to do a damn thing you don't want to. I'm telling you that you don't want to go after this thing Kierra." Malcolm wondered if the girl had lost her mind.

"Malcolm he is after me. He's on my scent. Malcolm you know as well as I do he won't stop until one of us is dead."

Kierra hadn't wanted to go up against this thing but he had left her no choice. Any choice she might have had in this had been taken away from her.

"Kierra how did that happen? What did you do to it?" Malcolm couldn't believe that his young friend had done something to piss one of these things off.

"It thinks I killed its mate or I was at least in on it, to top it off, she was also pregnant." Kierra waited for the next obvious question.

"Did you?" Malcolm couldn't believe Kierra would be that stupid.

"No. I know the thing would normally have been able to lock onto the smell of the one who killed the woman but the person who did kill her was smart enough to burn the body as well as the house where the murder took place. That woman didn't deserve what happened to her Malcolm." Kierra was pissed over that fact alone but that the killer had put this damn thing on her was really making her blood boil.

"If she was sleeping with this damn thing then she deserved no better if you ask me." Malcolm didn't really think that but he wanted to see how Kierra would react to this. "Shouldn't she have been willing to die before letting something like that touch her."

"She didn't know Malcolm. I knew her. She was an innocent that got taken advantage of. All she could remember was that she met someone one night that she found herself drawn to for some reason. She woke up the next morning in her bed with no memory of when or how she got there. She knew that something had happened although she wasn't sure what. She had only found out she was pregnant by this creature just before she was killed.

The person who killed her was a vigilante for hire and had been tracking the thing. This bastard had been following the damn thing so he was there when this poor girl had been drawn into its web. He waited until he knew she was pregnant. Once he was sure of that fact he killed her. He ripped the offspring from her before he burned her, the baby, everything that might lead the thing back to him.

"How did you find all this out Kierra?" Malcolm found her information a bit hard to believe.

"He wasn't alone when he did it. There was someone else there. Evidently they weren't able to cover all their tracks, the thing ultimately got to them. The guy told the son-of-a-bitch I was the one to kill the woman trying to keep it from killing him. Didn't save the lying bastard of course but the damn thing now believes I was in on it. Anyway, his sidekick somehow managed to escape making a bee line straight to me wanting me to protect him. He told me the whole story." Kierra waited to see what Malcolm would say.

"What happened to this guy?" Malcolm felt he knew the answer to that question but he wanted her to tell him.

"His dead." Kierra didn't elaborate.

"I see. It might have been better if you had managed to keep the guy alive." Malcolm didn't have to be told that Kierra had killed the poor son-of-a-bitch. He thought it was best not to refer to that at this point.

"Wasn't an option Malcolm. He would have been more trouble than he was worth. He would also have been a liability. I can't afford that right now." Kierra had enjoyed watching that scum bag taking his last breath.

"Kierra why don't you get out of this mess? You know as well as I do that most of us don't live that long. You're still young, you could still have a life." Malcolm would never tell the girl that he was in love with her. First he was old enough to be her father at the very least, second he had a gut feeling that his days were numbered, when he said number he wasn't talking in years. Malcolm might not have known exactly when but he was pretty damn sure what would be the cause, she was sitting across from him.

"You know I can't do that. Even if I wanted to I've made too many enemies, both living and dead. There's been a price on my head since long before now." Kierra like Malcolm, felt that her time was running short. The haunting feeling that her end was coming pretty quick had left her with a sense of urgency that she would have been hard pressed to explain to anyone.

"Well it probably doesn't matter anyway. If you take this thing on you know your chances of coming out of it alive are slim to none?" Malcolm was certain that if anyone had a chance of beating the damn thing it was Kierra. She had taken down people and things that others would never had a chance against. He had felt for a long time that the girl had something or someone watching over her because she should have been dead several times over.

"Did you bring what I asked for?" Kierra was getting restless. She suddenly felt she needed to put as much space between her and this place as she could. She looked over at a guy sitting in the opposite corner from where she was, she had no doubt exactly who or what he was. There would be a collection here tonight and she didn't want it to be her.

"Yeah, it's in my truck. You want to go first or do you want me to?" Malcolm was pretty sure of her answer but he had to ask anyway.

"You go." Kierra wanted a chance to see what the drunken idiot was going to do just for the fun of it. She had enough sense to realize that she should get out of this place as quickly as possible but she just couldn't resist this one thing.

A short time after Malcolm had made his exit Kierra's attention was focused on the man who had tried to pick her up earlier. She watched out of the corner of her eye as the drunk and two of his buddies left right after Malcolm. Knowing Malcolm he was in the shadows somewhere watching to see what would happen next. His smart ass would be in deep shit if he tried to come to her rescue from the drunk and his cronies. Truthfully she hoped the three drunks would have gone on their merry way down the road.

She let the men get out the door before she headed in that direction. Her slow pace was to allow the idiots to position themselves or move on. Kierra didn't have to check to see if her weapons were where they should be because they always were. She could feel the weight of the two knives, small pistol lying against her skin inside her boots, along with others tucked away on different parts of her body. The reassuring caress of the larger weapon in the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back was to her what a security blanket was to a small child.

Stepping outside the breeze blew across her face bringing the scent of something she hadn't expect right at this moment.

Shit she thought, she wasn't ready. Malcolm was sure to jump into that fight and he might very well be killed himself on her account. She couldn't have that hanging over her head if she did survive a confrontation with that thing.

Kierra felt the presence of the three men who had exited the bar before her. She suddenly realized what a fool she had been. Her plan had been to hurt the morons a little and be on her way and now she had no doubt they would be dead here shortly, either by her, Malcolm, or that other thing somewhere out here. What was the old saying, pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall?

Where before Kierra had anticipated a quick little interlude with the three drunks now things were going to get messy and pretty damn quick. She caught sight of Malcolm's truck parked away from everything in the dark. She couldn't see Malcolm but she knew he was there. From the side of the building she picked up the sound of the guys that had proceeded her out. They really were stupid. They must have figured out she was parked on that side of the building and had chosen to wait for her just out of sight there. They should have had enough sense to keep quiet if they had wanted to surprise her.

She considered the men a small nuisance or would have if it hadn't have been for the other presence she was picking up. Kierra didn't know how she was able to sense the things she did but she could feel that thing just inside a clump of trees about fifty yards from her truck. The area between her truck and those trees was as dark as pitch. She felt the thing as it began to slowly move toward the parking lot and her.

Kierra knew she didn't have any choice began walking toward the corner where the men were waiting. She hoped she would be able to knock them out before she had to confront the real threat to her and probably to Malcolm.

She had no idea that the thing had been watching the same men or that it knew they were up to no good. It had spotted the person it was interested in when she had stepped out the door. It immediately realized that like it their target was the same as his. That, he couldn't allow. The hellish figure moved surprisingly fast to stop those he saw as an obstacle to his goal. She was his and no one would deprive him of what he was after.

Kierra registered the speed of the thing coming toward her the minute it stepped out from the trees. Damn she thought, there was going to be no way to keep these idiots alive. She got to the corner of the building just before the damn thing was on top of them.

What happened after that she wasn't sure of but keeping those buffoons alive wasn't in the cards. Kierra had managed to put one of the men on his ass when the thing was on them and he immediately snapped the neck of the second man. Before she could respond the creature had hold of the third guy ripping his head completely from his shoulders. Then with one hand quickly grabbing Kierra by the throat it reached down with its other extremely long arm jerking the first guy up and threw him with such force against the side of the brick building that the man's head split open like a melon.

She was sure that Malcolm would be in the middle of this and she was more worried about the big man than herself. She wanted to stop the man but she couldn't get the words out because of the grip the thing had on her throat. Kierra shuddered at the cold clammy feel of its fingers on her skin. The monster had turned his attention to her now, his grasp on her tightened a bit as it lifted her to where she was now looking down into its eyes.

"Why did you kill her?" The deep raspy voice sent a chill down her spine.

"I didn't. She was my friend." The thing held her in the air somehow managing not to completely cut off the air she was breathing.

"Stay back or I'll snap her neck. Get back in your machine." This he delivered over his shoulder and even though she wasn't able to see him she was sure it was Malcolm. Kierra knew that Malcolm must have done as he was told because she thought she heard a door slam and the thing didn't snap her neck. Not yet anyway.

Turning back to Kierra, "the one I got said you did. I haven't gotten the other one yet but I will after I'm finished with you." The open maul that was the thing's mouth that Kierra was gazing into was like an abyss that was going to swallow her, she knew this thing was more than capable of doing just that.

"Well the one you got lied to you, as for the other he really should be right up your alley now. He's dead and buried deep where he can't be found, I saw to that. You don't kill my friends who was totally innocent and live." Kierra continued to stare into the face of the thing that held her in its grasp. She was trying to think of a way to get herself out of this but right now nothing she could think of gave her much of a chance of that happening.

"She was your friend?" Something in its voice seemed to change but Kierra had no delusions about what that meant.

"Yes, those two may have killed her but as far as I'm concerned you're the reason she is dead." She looked the thing in its eyes not flinching. She knew that she probably would feel the snapping of her neck, which would be the last thing she would ever feel she was sure.

"You don't lie." The thing slowly set her back down on her feet releasing her from its grip.

"No I don't." Now she was looking up into the creature's eyes never flinching. She knew that something had changed but she wasn't sure what it was, she also wasn't taking anything for granted.

"You blame me for her death." It wasn't a question but a statement of fact.

"They had been trailing you for weeks and watching you. All they saw was her with you. They didn't have any idea that you fogged her mind, kept her from seeing you for what you are. After you left they took her, held her captive. They tortured her until they knew she was pregnant. After it was apparent she was they ripped the fetus from her womb while she was still alive. Do you understand, while she was still alive?" Kierra was pushing it but she didn't care. That young woman had been her friend so when that bastard had come to her she found out what they had done to her. She was determined to make all three of the ones who were responsible pay for it.

"You want to make me pay?" The thing's eyes seemed to narrow as it looked down at her.

"Yes." Kierra didn't think she had much more of a chance than she did before but she wasn't thinking clearly right now and that damn sure wasn't a good thing.

"Well you might manage that, but not tonight. Tonight we both walk away."

Kierra shivered as the hideous thing ran his long blackened claw down the side of her cheek.

"Besides I like my meat a little more aged. I'm really not in the mood for a quick tasteless snack. The next time I see you I can promise you that you won't be so lucky." Again it reached out quickly taking hold of her again. This time his hold seemed to be a bit gentler but Kierra wasn't fooled by what might appear as a softening of the monster.

"You won't get this close to me next time." Kierra's bravado wasn't lost on the thing that held her in his grip.

"Well next time, worry about your own skin. You were so worried about these three worthless skin bags you let your guard down because of that I managed to get inside your head. Next time I'll make a full course meal out of you, I think you understand what I mean by that."

Abruptly dropping Kierra the thing turned around leaving as quickly as it came. It was already out of sight when Malcolm came running gathering Kierra up in his arms. He knew they had to get out of there before someone else walked out of the bar. It was at that moment that he heard the door of the bar squeak open. He quickly looked over at the door and saw who it was that had stepped out.

The two men made eye contact and nodded to one another. The man's business wasn't the two still standing but the three lying on the ground.

"Come on Kierra we need to get out of here now." Malcolm led her back to her truck.

"I need that equipment Malcolm."

"Are you still planning on going after that thing after what just happened?" Malcolm wasn't surprised but he had hoped she would rethink this whole thing. Maybe with a little time she would.

"Yes I'm going after it. There was too much going on here tonight and things got in the way." Kierra would like to bring those three nut cases back to life so she could kill them now.

"Look we can't stay here. I'll meet you down the road at the visitor's station over on the interstate not far from here. Right now we need this place in our rear view mirrors." Malcolm didn't want to get caught up in any police investigation.

"Malcolm I'm going to end that ghoul." Kierra would hunt that thing until one of them was dead.

"Kierra we'll talk down the road. Right now I just want out of here."

Both Kierra and Malcolm got in their vehicles, started them up, then they pulled out onto the highway. They would meet up again at that visitor's center but if Malcolm thought he would be able to talk Kierra out of hunting that thing down he had another think coming.

### Afterwards

We hope you enjoyed our stories. It is important that you know that none of the authors who participated in this project will make anything from it. All funds, outside of any taxes, will all go to a children's hospital. Every writer took a great deal of their time and hard work to produce this book and the bonds that were formed here I hope will continue for a long time to come. Thank you for reading our little tomb of terror and of course we hope you will read some of our other work.

Have a good night.

### About the Authors

D. K. Mason

D.K. Mason is the author of In the Belly of the Mountain, Back in the Belly of the Mountain, and a special edition combining the two novels into one. Belly of the Mountain among other assorted short stories in various anthologies. The author is originally from Eastern Kentucky and now lives in her adopted state of Georgia with her children often referred to as her crew.

Books by D. K. Mason

The Belly of the Mountain

Back to the Belly of the Mountain

Belly of the Mountain (combining the two novels into one story)

Also a contributor to many publication of short stories.

Amber C. Carlyle

Amber is an author and avid gamer, who spends her days working as a wage slave. She presently resides in Charleston, SC with her husband and their two animal companions. Her favorite ways to pass the time, when not writing, are table top gaming, video gaming, and reading - all of which help to influence and inspire her.

Novels by Amber C. Carlyle

Not So Picture Perfect, Between the Veil series Book 1

Fae, Fire & Faith, Between the Veil series Book 2

Short Story Compilation by Amber C. Carlyle

Darkest Shadows

Works in Progress by Amber C. Carlyle

Between the Veil series Book 3

Cathy Pace Matthews

Cathy is the author of five books and an avid blogger who often post exclusive short stories on her web site. She is the wife of a wonderful man and the mother of three great daughters. She will be more than happy to tell you she is crazy and has a delightfully twisted mind. Don't believe it, ask her husband although he might disagree with the delightful part.

Books by Cathy Pace Matthews

Blood Lines The Curse

Blood Lines Buried Treasure

Blood Lines Family Ties

Journey into Nightmares

Nightmare Express

Gary Jefferies

Gary is a former research scientist turned home parent to two boys. Author in waiting and keen writer focusing on horror, fantasy fiction and psychological drama. He also blogs regularly and has chaired a pre-school charity and been a school Governor over a ten year period.

J. A. Kyser

Julie Ann Kyser-Fosnaugh lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee with her husband, Chuck, and their three cats. She has three grown children, seven grandchildren, and two great grandchildren which means life can get hectic over the holidays. Along with taking up writing at the ripe old age of fifty three she is also an avid amateur photographer and one of her favorite places to take photos is in cemeteries which makes some people think she is a little weird.

Mary Dunaway

Born and raised in Memphis TN, then moved to Pensacola at the age of 33. Currently a wife, mother, student, and occasional writer. Mary has a wicked sense of humor that was a bee in the britches of nearly every adult around her when she was growing up.

Patricia Knight

Patricia is an aspiring writer. She lives in Louisiana with her two fur babies and her family. When not busy writing, she attends university, and is a yarn-addicted sock knitter.

S J. Lucas

S.J Lucas is an indie writer from South Africa and is a self-proclaimed bibliobibuli and poetry enthusiast. She is a geeky mother to three amazing children, and wife to an incredibly supportive superhero. She is a keen metal music lover, and adores gaming, bacon, stand-up comedy, tattoo art and nerdiness

Sitarra "LullaDIEs" Sefton

Sitarra "LullaDIEs" Sefton is a horror fiend living in Central Oregon, USA. She enjoys metal music, playing pool, studying psychology, and being generally creative. Spending much of her time deep in the woods, she is naturally a lover of all critters and their habitats. Aside from writing, "LullaDIEs" also does Modeling, Photo Editing, Drawing, and Painting; all of which tend to drift towards horror themes.

Question to Kill and Consumables are excerpts from an upcoming book, 101 Psychos, by Sitarra "LullaDIEs" Sefton. To be released in 2017.

Also to be released in 2017 by LullaDIEs is Demonic Lullabies (Dark Poetry) and Tales of Psycho Clause (Seasonal Horror Shorts).

Consumables is an excerpt from an upcoming book, 101 Psychos, by Sitarra "LullaDIEs" Sefton. To be released in 2017. Also to be released in 2017 by LullaDIEs is Demonic Lullabies (Dark Poetry) and Tales of Psycho Clause (Seasonal Horror Shorts).

Back to content

Acknowledgements

So many people have been involved with the creation of this book. There is no way I can list them all here. The group, The Creative Evil Female Mind and Other Evil Geniuses, is a group of people who came together to help one another out and motivate each member to excel in their chosen art form. Among the group you'll find artist, photographers, musicians, writers and even thinkers. We try to encourage all the people in the group to pursue their dreams and go beyond what they have before.

I hope you enjoyed our first group endeavor and I hope we are able to bring you more in the future.

I would also like to thank two very special women, Sherry Parker Griffith and Mickey Pace. Ladies you did far more than you think.

Book cover designed by Cathy Pace Matthews

Book cover Image by Mary Hollaway

Thanks to our model on the book cover, Regina Rochelle.

