Dark Screams, Volume 4

by Dark Screams- Volume 4 (retail) (epub)

  She heard her name cried out softly. Chelsea!

  “Chelsea!” she said softly. “Where are you?”

  “Mo?”

  Trying to ascertain the direction Chelsea’s voice had come from, Mo paused and stood dead still. She listened for Chelsea—and for the sound of the Ripper’s footfalls.

  Chelsea was to her left.

  She turned down another aisle. She passed a row with superhero toy models to be purchased; a vendor’s booth selling life-sized gorillas was next to the toys. Stuffed monster toys were in the next. She passed by them hurriedly and turned into a row of mutant, deformed zombies.

  And there was Chelsea. She’d fallen backward and was staring up at zombies. Mo looked at them and blinked.

  They seemed to be moving. They seemed to gnash their teeth as they moved in belabored slow motion. One of them, a horrid creature, six feet or so, mottled green and brown and gray, slimed and gory and with one eye, seemed to be reaching for her…

  She blinked; she reached down and drew Chelsea to her feet, pulling her back.

  Eerie laughter sounded. The zombies were moving. They were robots or animatronic; her motion had activated them and they were moving—battery-operated.

  “Where’s the door, Chelsea? Where’s the door?” Mo demanded.

  “That way—I think,” Chelsea said.

  Mo looked. And as she did so, she heard footsteps on the convention floor.

  And then a laugh. A different laugh.

  A real laugh.

  “I see you, my pretty little whores,” said a voice that sounded like sandpaper. “Women,” he added with disgust. “All whores! I see you, and I’m coming for you!” He quoted then from the “Dear Boss” letter the police had received. “I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them…”

  “Come on!” Mo mouthed to Chelsea.

  Chelsea remained frozen in pure terror. She nodded.

  “Which way?” Mo persisted.

  Chelsea pointed. Grabbing her friend, Mo moved in the direction Chelsea indicated.

  But it was wrong; Chelsea was lost herself, so terrified she had no idea where she was going.

  They had made a full run. They moved down an aisle where they had been before; at the end they would reach Chelsea’s own Revenant hero and the alien monster he faced—along with the depiction of the room at Miller’s Square where Mary Kelly had perished.

  “No, no!” Mo said. “Chelsea, we’re wrong, we’re going to be at a corner again, possibly trapped.”

  She turned. A massive werewolf was over her, teeth inches long. She told herself that she was seeing things in the dim light, but it was moving.

  Yes, it was moving. It was coming straight toward her.

  The werewolf…a towering figure of gray fur, massive claws, and razor-sharp fangs. It was moving. The eyes…the eyes were alive.

  She heard it growling, saw it throw its massive head back and let out a roar…

  The werewolf pounced.

  It was just an animatronic! She told herself.

  But she screamed in pure terror as the thing came at her.

  —

  Mo!

  He knew the sound of her voice; knew Mo, loved Mo. She was capable and smart and…

  Unarmed. Unarmed in this field where the monsters were sometimes animatronic, sometimes motion activated, sometimes…

  Far too real.

  Where the hell had her scream come from?

  Then, in the dim light, he saw her again. The young woman…

  The ghost of a murder victim. Murdered here? Somewhere among this array of the gruesome and fantastic.

  She paused. She realized that Aidan saw her.

  That he could see the dead.

  And she beckoned to him.

  Aidan’s heart seemed to catch in his throat. He’d gone by rows of books and goods and creatures, and he had yet to find the girls. He raced along an aisle at last, where he nearly tripped over the fallen figure of a massive werewolf—its battery-operated paw was still stretching out, long talonlike claws clenching and unclenching.

  He looked up. For a moment, he paused. He might have been looking in a mirror—at himself, very weirdly dressed. He saw the Revenant—Chelsea’s creation. Himself. But after the first shock, he looked beyond. There was a tableau display on a small platform or stage; through the window of a nineteenth-century apartment he could see…

  A butchered corpse. A horrible, bloody mess.

  It was the display for an upcoming movie, Rip, he could just make out. An English cop was standing in front, seeing nothing.

  The Ripper was nowhere to be seen. A fake fire seemed to crackle.

  He heard footsteps behind him and spun around, alert and ready.

  A long-bladed blood-dripping knife was coming down toward him—the Ripper was moving, walking—attacking him.

  Aidan threw himself to the side just in time. The knife fell downward as he rolled away from the exhibit, landing flat at the feet of the mannequin built like him.

  He had been unarmed; he hadn’t planned on needing his gun at dinner.

  But as his eyes touched on the exhibit, he prayed that he might now have a manner with which to fight.

  He scrambled to his feet and grabbed the sword and shield from the mannequin. He was ready.

  But the Ripper was gone.

  And Mo was there.

  “Mo!” He screamed her name.

  Nothing, for a moment, seemed to move—or make a sound.

  And then a table full of killer clowns began to laugh and cackle.

  —

  Struggling to free herself from the mechanical arms of the fallen werewolf, Mo lost sight of Chelsea. And when she heard Aidan calling to her, she didn’t dare answer.

  She made it to her feet, aware that they had to be in the same area—near the Revenant display, the display that had brought them to the convention center by night.

  When she jumped to her feet, she was instantly on alert for the Ripper. He was near them; she knew. He didn’t intend to let them go.

  Zombies seemed prepared to strike, the werewolf had come for her…having fallen from its pedestal.

  But the Ripper was real.

  She heard something…

  The sound of a knife being drawn against the concrete of the floor. He was there.

  Hunching low, afraid to speak at all, she listened. Yes, he was close. She needed to get behind him.

  Crouching behind a counter where Venetian masks were displayed, Mo waited. And then she saw him coming. In the strange light, it looked as if the Ripper were coming toward her, smiling as he traversed the London fog.

  As he sought his victim.

  She let him get by her and looked around desperately for a weapon. She realized she still had the fire poker in her hand. Falling, tripping, grabbing Chelsea—some basic instinct had stayed with her. She hadn’t let her weapon go.

  She waited until he was by her and came to her feet. Slowly, trying hard not to make a sound, she crept after him, fire poker gripped tightly in her hands.

  Then she heard Chelsea. Her friend let out an anguished shriek; Mo saw the Ripper character find her and drag her up from behind a showcase by the hair. She was pleading, begging desperately for her life, all the while disbelieving.

  “No, no, not real…not real, please, please, don’t kill me!”

  Mo went running, her fire poker raised.

  And she hit him. Hit him hard, in the dead center of his head. He dropped his hold on Chelsea; Chelsea let out a squeal and ran again.

  Only the Ripper didn’t fall.

  He turned to Mo. She raised the fire poker, ready to strike again.

  He caught hold of it and twisted, twisted so hard that her arm was nearly wrenched from its socket.

  She tried to hold on. Tried desperately, while demonic clowns laughed and werewolves howled.

  It was wrenched from her. The Ripper started toward her again.

  She backed away carefully; she had to get far e
nough away to avoid the fall of his knife without backing into a booth—or a zombie, or a vampire, or a great ape.

  The knife began to fall. She screamed while trying to duck the blow.

  To her amazement, she didn’t feel the rip of steel against her flesh and bone; she heard the clang of the steel of the knife bang against other metal.

  And she saw…the Revenant.

  He was there with his sword and shield, blocking the knife from hitting her flesh, crouching to the floor himself from the force of the blow on the shield. The Ripper let loose a maniacal cry of fury and attacked.

  The Revenant made it to its feet, slamming back with the shield and wielding the mighty sword.

  At last, the Ripper went down. Slashed across the midsection.

  The Revenant came to her.

  She let out a cry.

  Unbelievably, the Ripper was back up. The Revenant turned in time to deflect the blow again and swung his sword with a passion. The Ripper went down again. It wasn’t enough. The Revenant stood over it, slashing and slashing.

  And finally, it seemed to Mo, that the London mist cleared. She no longer heard the laughing of the clowns or the howl of werewolves.

  She looked at the Revenant and it seemed that the mist cleared her head, too. It wasn’t a fabricated mannequin, it was Aidan. He was in jeans and a polo shirt—he had just carried the sword and the shield.

  He reached out an arm to her and she rushed to him.

  “You’re all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, you?”

  “Yes. Just…just next time we travel to see a friend, maybe it could be a friend who illustrates children’s books with cute little vegetarian forest creatures, or something.”

  “Chelsea!” she breathed.

  But Chelsea was already walking to them.

  “Real,” she whispered. “He became real. And the Revenant was real, too.”

  Aidan hunched down by the bloody figure of the Ripper, pulling away the scarf. Chelsea gasped. “It’s Harrison,” she said. “Lloyd Harrison.” Chelsea looked around, shaking her head as if to clear it. “Harrison—a real man. And you, of course, Aidan. I just created my mannequin to look like you. I could have sworn…I could have sworn that the zombies were attacking, that the mummies were coming for us…and the werewolf…well, it just fell, didn’t it? It was all real.”

  “Almost,” Aidan said quietly, looking over Chelsea’s head to Mo. “Except for the ghost,” he said softly.

  “The ghost?” Chelsea asked.

  “Never mind,” Aidan said. “Let’s get the police. Now this is a land where a very real monster killed a real woman.”

  —

  The insider news report the next morning explained everything: Lloyd Harrison had been a sexual sadist and vicious murderer; the police were working to connect him to several unsolved crimes in the area and beyond. A total psychopath, he’d gone undiagnosed during years of court-ordered therapy—where he’d lied to all his therapists about his state of mind. He’d also been suffering from the result of heavy drug use for a long time—which explained the hallucinogens in the champagne the two surviving women had imbibed. His ability to put on the monster show had fed into his every horrific fantasy, and therefore he had committed his last heinous act in the guise of Jack the Ripper.

  Chelsea, of course, still found it difficult to grasp.

  Aidan had been the one to talk to the local police—to explain everything that had happened clearly and in the best manner possible.

  But when they’d been free to leave, he’d refused, waiting for them to take the body of Emma Cowell.

  Mo didn’t ask him. He just told her that they owed Emma everything. She understood when the police asked him how he’d known that he needed to break into the convention center.

  “Mo got a call out to me,” he said.

  Which, of course, she hadn’t, and so she knew, of course, that he’d been led by the ghost of the murdered girl.

  The fact that Lloyd Harrison was dead must have been enough for Emma. She never appeared again; she certainly wasn’t at her funeral.

  Chelsea remained something of a mess. She didn’t know what she was going to do for a living.

  Mo tried to talk to her.

  But Aidan did it best.

  “Monsters walk among us all the time, Chelsea. We just have to learn to watch out for them. I do believe—and think that you know now—that the worst monster to ever walk the earth is man. But man can also be the greatest creation, too. And after all, you created a superhero, too. And if you hadn’t created that superhero, well…”

  In the end, Chelsea was fine. She decided to work exclusively for her company’s children’s division, taking on the task of lead fabricator for a big lovable and dopey dog called Harry.

  Mo knew, however, that they all needed to take the lesson to heart.

  Monsters did walk among them. And it was often difficult to discern in life just which monsters were the real ones.

  For Marty Greenberg and Ed Gorman, with gratitude…

  About the Editors

  RICHARD CHIZMAR is the founder and publisher/editor of Cemetery Dance magazine and the Cemetery Dance Publications book imprint. He has edited more than a dozen anthologies, including The Best of Cemetery Dance, The Earth Strikes Back, Night Visions 10, October Dreams (with Robert Morrish), and the Shivers series.

  BRIAN JAMES FREEMAN is the managing editor of Cemetery Dance Publications and the author of several novels and novellas, along with four short story collections including an eBook-only exclusive that hit #1 on Amazon.com in the United States, the UK, Germany, Spain, and France in the short story categories. His blog and website can be found at http://www.BrianJamesFreeman.com.

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