Shades
Eight Tales of Terror
By
D. Nathan Hilliard
This book is dedicated to my wonderful and trusted circle of proofreaders. Without their help this work would have been a collection of an entirely different sort of horrors . I want to thank…
Cherri Galbiati
Stephanie Hilliard
Claire (Charlie) Paul
April Rood
Ryan Passarelli
And, as always, my lovely wife Karla…without whom none of this would be possible.
Introduction
Death and White Satin
An Echo of Blood and Mirrors
Dance of the Ancients
A Memory of Me
Legacy of Flies
Storm Chase
A Singularity of Purpose
A Long Cold Forever of a Night
Introduction
So whatever happened to ghost stories?
When I made the decision to write a horror anthology, I thought it might be a good idea to buy a few for my Kindle and see what was out there. I figured that would help me get a feeling for what people were reading and what today’s reader expected. It turned out to be both an excellent and enlightening investment, for I discovered there are a lot of talented horror writers nowadays doing short stories. What started as research ended up being a valuable and entertaining experience.
But as I read through the different anthologies, I noticed something.
Where were the ghosts?
I would occasionally find one, here or there, but they were buried amongst the horde of vampires, werewolves, serial killers, and other assorted monsters that stalk the dark fields of the horror genre. Of those I found, only a few seemed to have been written with the intention of actually being frightening. Some were creepy, but just as many were sympathetic figures or even helpful to the protagonist. And this is all fine because it’s what the authors intended, and they did a good job of it…but I was looking for something different.
I wanted scary.
At this point, I went back to Amazon.com with the intention of downloading anthologies dedicated to ghost stories. But once I started searching, I was stunned at their scarcity. There were some, but I really expected there to be more than there were. It turns out there just weren’t that many collections dedicated to ghost stories, and many of them used the same stories from the public domain works of the Victorian era. So I downloaded what I found and kicked back to enjoy another week full of evenings reading.
Again, what I found surprised me.
The large majority of the stories were written by men such as Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwell, and other assorted writers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. While I enjoyed the stories greatly, I could also see how they suffered from being told in the styles, settings, and conventions of the times. There were a few more modern single author collections. Yet once again I discovered the first or second story might be a ghost story and then the rest were other types of tales entirely. They were entertaining, though still not exactly what I was looking for.
On the other hand, this was about research and that research was paying off.
By this time, I began to get a clear idea of what my own anthology project should be. I wanted to write a collection dedicated to ghosts...not exactly in the modern paranormal style, but in the old fashioned “horror from beyond the grave” genre with a more modern voice. I wanted revenants of fearsome demeanor, but each also being the unique product of their own circumstances, history, and who they were in their former life.
At the same time, I wanted to preserve the novelette form (works of 7000 to 17,000 words) that many of the old masters used, before magazine space limitations shrank the short story to much smaller conditions. I think the novelette serves the ghost story well for, unlike many other terrors that one finds in the horror genre, the ghost is a character that requires a back story. A giant spider is fearsome merely due its existence, but half the horror of a phantom is how it reached his or her current state. Therefore the only story in this collection that weighs in at fewer than seven thousand words is Storm Chase, a reprint of the very first ghost story I had published in a short story anthology (Thank you, Pill Hill Press.) All the rest are tales written for this project.
So I humbly present to you, the reader, my very first single author anthology… Shades: Eight Tales of Terror. I sincerely hope the specters you find within give you both shivers and delight, and maybe food for thought as well. If so, then my endeavor was a success.
Now please get comfortable, sit back, and let me tell you a story…
Death and White Satin
“Oh, Mrs. Donalds, look at this!”
Jessica pulled the wedding dress out of the big dusty box and held it up in the dim gloom of the attic. Thin December sunlight filtered in through the slats of the nearby window, cutting visible beams through the airborne motes and casting stripes down the length of the garment. It seemed to flow like an ivory waterfall from her hands back into the old package from which it came.
“It’s Marge, Jessica!” Her future mother-in-law’s laughing voice floated in through the door from the other room of the attic. “You’re marrying Ricky in a week, so it’s time to drop the ‘Mrs. Donalds.’”
“Yes, Mom!”
“Oho! Getting cheeky already are we!”
“Sorry, Mom!”
“Okay, I guess that’ll do as well,” came the chuckled reply. “I’ll be there in a minute. Right now I’m in a life or death fight with a killer moth.”
Jessica giggled, holding the dress higher to try and get an idea of the size. She already had her own dress tailored and ready for the big day, but she couldn’t help but walk over to the grimy mirror in the corner to get a better look. A few boxes blocked her path and it took a moment’s effort to clear the way. Then she found herself forced to shoo away the horde of moths that erupted from behind the last box.
“Blech! Shoo! Go help your comrade in the other room!”
“I heard that, you traitor!”
“Sorry! Bugs and cowardice just go together with me!”
Jessica flailed her arms in an attempt to drive off the pale swarm. This succeeded in raising a huge cloud of dust to accompany the aerial assault and resulted in a sneezing fit on her part. For a moment she considered retreating, but the combination of flapping and sneezing finally scattered the moths. A full minute of controlled breathing allowed the dust to settle. She knew her allergies were going to give her hell over this, but understood that price to be part of the deal before she came up here.
At least now that the bug initiated festivities were over, she could get back to the bridal gown. Holding the dress against her body, she gave it and herself a critical once over in the mirror.
“Well, well,” she mused aloud. “Whoever wore this cut quite the figure back in the day.” Jessica conceded with rueful honesty that this dress would have to be taken in and let out in all the wrong places to fit her. Standing sideways and getting a profile view didn’t help matters much either. “Oh well, I’m sure bone structure has a lot to with it.”
“What was that, d…OH GOD!!!”
Jessica whirled with the dress to see Marge leaning against the door, her hand up to her throat.
“Marge! Are you okay?”
The older woman’s face had gone pale as chalk, and the way she slumped against the doorframe frightened her future daughter-in-law.
“Marge, what is it? Talk to me!”
“It’s…it’s okay.” Marge gulped air, putting her palm to her forehead. “I was just surprised to see you and that dress. I—I thought that thing had been thrown away years ag
o.”
“Maybe you’d better sit down,” Jessica indicated an ancient ottoman next to the stack of boxes. She threw the dress over the mirror and went to pull the small piece of furniture into a more accessible position.
“I’m okay,” Marge protested as she took the proffered seat. “Really, I am. I just got a bit of a shock, that’s all.”
“From a wedding dress? Is it yours?”
“Oh lord, no,” She cast a disgusted look at the garment. “If I had of known that thing was up here I would have burned it twenty-five years ago.”
Jessica recoiled at the look of pure venom on Marge’s face. As long as she had known her, her future mother in law had been one of the most cheerfully placid people she ever met. Marge had made her feel welcome right from the very first time Ricky introduced them, and the two bonded almost overnight. To see the loathing she directed at the old dress came as something of a shock. The effect was contagious and Jessica found herself regarding the old gown with wariness, too.
“What is it, Marge? What’s wrong with it?”
“It belonged to Priscilla Hatcher.” She said it like that should explain everything… spitting the name out like it had a foul taste of its own.
“Who?”
For a moment Marge didn’t answer, continuing to stare at the garment like it could come alive any second and strike. Then she seemed to gather herself with a shake of her head and focused back on Jessica.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Jessy.” Now she looked slightly embarrassed. “I forgot you come from Dallas—not around here. Besides, this all happened before you were born.”
“What happened?” Jessica sat down on a nearby box, sensing a story in the offing.
“Oh, it’s one of those horrid events that become legends in small towns like this.” Marge smiled wanly at her. “It’s just in this case the event involved my family, and it cost me my oldest brother. So it hits close to home. I really had no idea the dress still existed. I never thought about it, I just assumed we had gotten rid of it.”
“I’m sorry, Marge. If you don’t want to talk about this…”
“No…no…It’s alright. Let’s go downstairs and have some tea, and I’ll tell you about it. You would hear about it eventually from somebody in this town…it might as well be me. Besides, I know your allergies must be killing you by now, what with all this dust.
***
“Oh, your poor eyes!” Marge set the steaming cup of tea in front of her. “It hurts me just looking at them!.”
“It’s okay.” Jessica knew her eyes were now bright red from the dust. “I’ll take a nap here in a little bit, and they should be okay in a couple of hours. They don’t hurt so much as just make me feel sleepy.”
“Are you sure? Can I get you something?”
“I’m fine.” She stopped herself from rubbing her eyes. “So who was Priscilla Hatcher? And why is her wedding dress up in your attic?”
Marge sighed and took another sip of her tea.
“Priscilla Hatcher,” she recalled, “was the town beauty queen. You would have to be from a small town to fully appreciate what that can mean. In her case, she lived up to the title in just about every way imaginable.”
“She was a looker, huh?” Jessica remembered the cut of the dress.
“Oh yes.” Marge looked into her cup. “She was one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen…here, on TV, at the movies, or anywhere else. She had a perfect face and a body that had all the boys following her like a line of tomcats. And naturally the men thought that was the reason all of us women hated her.”
“Was it?”
“Maybe a little,” the older woman conceded, “but we could see what the guys couldn’t…or they were just too infatuated to care. That woman was an evil, selfish, narcissistic bitch who only saw the world through the prism of what it could do for her. She treated the people around her like they were dirt, because in her eyes they were, and only maintained a façade for the people she wanted something from.”
“Wow,” Jessica breathed aloud, still stunned at the vehemence in Marge’s voice. “I guess I’ve met a few of those.”
“Not like her, believe me. Anyway, it would have made no difference to me, but just after she graduated Hallisboro High, my brother Robert came home from law school.” Marge’s eyes got a faraway look as she continued. “Of course, there he was…handsome, fresh out of college, and going places…and there she was…beautiful, graceful, and a prize any man who didn’t know better would want. They met in July, and by the first of September they were engaged.”
“Love at first sight, huh.”
“They thought so. Robert fell in love with who she pretended to be, and she fell in love with what he could be. She was already boasting he would be mayor someday, if he bothered to ‘stay in this dirty little town at all’. Of course, she planned a wedding fit for a queen. Her father had left and her mother was poor, so our family footed the bills. We were well off, not rich, but Mom and Dad certainly didn’t mind stepping up in this case.”
“And she took advantage of it?” Jessica took a sip of her tea and rubbed her eye.
“Oh yes.” Marge frowned. “She just accepted it all as her due. She insisted on that fancy tailored wedding dress, which probably cost more money than she saw in her entire life. And she saw to it both ballrooms at the old Empire Hotel were reserved for her reception. I think she saw it as her coronation, or something. She took every opportunity to rub other women’s faces in the dirt over how grand this thing was going to be. There were going to be wall to wall flowers and a band brought up from Houston. The catering bill alone would have been huge.”
“Would have been?” Jessica’s ears perked, sensing the story about to get a lot more interesting. “What happened?”
“Emma Wallace happened.” The older woman smiled at the memory. “She moved back into town that fall…having just finished college herself. She was Roberts’s old high school sweethear, and everything Priscilla wasn’t. She was smart, funny, and appreciated the people around her. I’ll admit she didn’t have Priscilla’s looks, but she wasn’t homely either. And by that time I think Robert was starting to figure out that having something isn’t always as good as wanting it.”
“Trouble in paradise?”
“Well, Robert could be as blind as any man, but I think after a few months actually with Priscilla he began to see what he was about to tie himself to. Of course he didn’t say anything to us—especially me, his fifteen year old sister—but I remember them arguing more and more later that fall. He began to learn how to say ‘no’ to her, and finding more reasons to say it.”
“Not the kind of thing she was used to hearing, I’m guessing?”
“Nope,” Marge chuckled, “she couldn’t believe it. She even accused me once of ‘trying to turn him against her.’ She knew I couldn’t stand her, and the feeling was mutual, but she must have been crazy if she thought Robert cared much about the opinion of his ‘bratty little sister.’ Of course, it turned out she was crazy anyway. And I think she must have sensed her grip on him slipping. Then Emma showed back up in town…”
“And she saw a threat.” Jessica put her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands. Her eyes were bothering her more than ever, but she wanted to hear the end of this.
“You know, at first I don’t think she did. I don’t think it even occurred in her head that some other woman could compete with her. She just treated Emma with the same contemptuous disdain all the rest of us lesser females received, and didn’t see what was happening right under her nose. Robert had found a woman who could be his friend. One who was about a whole lot of things other than what the world could do for her. I think by then, he had finally started coming to his senses about his ‘beauty queen.’”
“True love triumphed, eh?”
“Yep.” Marge sipped her tea. “Priscilla started to realize something was up, but it was too late. She and Robert had a huge fight, right upstairs. The whole house could hear
her screaming and yelling...and then he just broke it off.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Three weeks before the wedding. He told her it was over, he had made a mistake, and he didn’t intend to make it worse by taking things any further. By that time she had him yelling so we could hear everything he said. He told her to get out and go run up somebody else’s bills. He said she could keep the car he bought her, but to pack it up and hit the road. I think that was one of the happiest days of my life.”
“You didn’t even feel a little sorry for her?”
“No.” Marge grimaced and shook her head. “Maybe if I had been older and wiser, I would have. But I hated her like the devil himself. She treated me like I amounted to nothing every time she could get away with it, and I confess I took great satisfaction in peeking out from the sitting room and watching her come down the stairs that last time. She walked like she was drunk or something. She didn’t say anything to anybody, just tottered out to her car without taking anything with her, and left.”
“And Robert went straight to Emma?”
“They were dating within a week. And everybody could tell just by watching them, they were meant to be together. They simply clicked in all the right ways. Soon, there was a new wedding in the planning and nobody was surprised.”
“What about Priscilla?” Jessica’s eyes now felt gummy and sore, but she wanted to hear the rest of this. After the story, she would go upstairs for a nap while Marge went to do her shopping.
“At first she disappeared, which wasn’t really surprising. It would have been humiliating enough for any girl. But after the way Priscilla had acted the past few months it must have been ten times worse. I’m guessing she laid low at her mother’s trailer out on the edge of town, or maybe she even left town for a while. Either way, nobody saw her again until the day before the wedding. Then Junior Godfrey said he saw her riding her bicycle on Tin Prairie Road, out behind the cement plant. He said she was wearing her cheerleader uniform from high school.”
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