Shades: Eight Tales of Terror

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  The hallway stood empty.

  The south hall is in the old part of the school, so it still has those high tile ceilings and tall lockers which make the whole place seem darker. I actually kind of like it, but Laura acting so scared was beginning to give me a case of nerves too. I took an extra couple of seconds to make sure it was really empty before stepping out and motioning her to follow.

  “Wait!” she hissed, “You’re going the wrong way! The exit is right over there. Why are you going back that way?”

  “That exit opens out by the tennis court,” I whispered back. “That’s where Coach Toley goes to sneak her smokes. She’ll bust us for sure if we go that way. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

  “Oh.” She actually looked impressed for a second before going back to acting scared of her own shadow.

  “Just follow me,” I continued, “and don’t worry about sneaking or anything. We’re only going halfway back up the hall, and I’ve got a hall pass.”

  She nodded, and stepped out into the hall after me. Instead of following, she walked along beside me, but I still almost jumped out of my skin when she took my hand.

  Seriously, I had one of the hottest girls in school take me by the hand and it gave me the creeps. I guess because I knew down deep there had to be something really wrong in her world for her to do that with me. How screwed up is that?

  So anyways, we walk down to the door to the shop class. I do a quick check again to see if anybody is around to see us, then I yank open the door real quick and pull her inside.

  No, I didn’t force her, dammit! She didn’t fight me or anything, she was coming along willingly. I told you, she was scared of something and following along like a lamb. It was creepy, but I wasn’t making her do anything…she was hanging on to me like I was her boyfriend or something.

  Anyways, we go into the shop classroom and shut the door. There is no shop in third period, so we had the place to ourselves.

  “What are we doing in here?” Laura asked. Her head appeared to be on a swivel as she looked from corner to corner of the darkened room. All the machines had tarps over them, and she was acting like they might be hiding something.

  “We’re gonna take the side door out back of the school,” I said, and walked across the dusty floor to the outside door. “Just listen here until you hear the PE class go past on their way to the locker rooms. They do that about ten minutes before the bell, so we’ll have plenty of time to make a run for the walk-in gate in the back fence before class lets out and there won’t be any people to see us.”

  She actually looks all impressed again, and I got to admit I’m feeling pretty good about myself. I know she probably wasn’t no straight laced angel or nothing…hell, who really is…but she just didn’t have anything like the experience I had at this kind of thing. She’s up there on her end up the totem pole where you have to be pretty good, and I’m down on my end where you can master this stuff.

  “So,” I lean against a desk, and actually fight the urge to pull my hand free of hers. “What’s up?”

  She didn’t answer right away, still looking around the room.

  “Hey” I tried to get her to focus, “there ain’t nobody in here but us. So you want to tell me about it?”

  “I already did,” she said. “I skipped out of the nurse’s office and they’re going to be looking for me. I need to get home to get something.”

  At this point she lets go of my hand and pulls out her cell phone. She hits a number, then stands there rocking back and forth with the thing against her ear.

  “C’mon Barry, pick up!”

  Yeah, she’s standing their leaning on me and calling Barry Price. I started to feel like a huge sucker, and it kind of made me mad. I’m the one going out on a limb for her, and she’s calling her pretty boy-toy. How’s that for gratitude? I’m starting to wonder if she hasn’t just cooked up a bunch of drama to get some attention from Barry. So I’m kind of pissed and feeling stupid. And I’m really thinking about turning around, going back to class, and just telling Mr. Gregor I got lost on the way to the bathroom or something.

  “Hey, look,” I stand up, “Just listen at the door, and you can make your own way to the gate once it’s time. It’ll be easy.”

  “Corvin! No!” She grabs me and starts acting like she’s going to freak out again. “Don’t leave me here alone!”

  “Hey, if this is just so you can set up a date with Barry that’s your business. You don’t need me for that.”

  “No!” she squawks, “It’s nothing like that! I’m in real trouble here!”

  “How? From sneaking out of the nurses office? Big deal! That’ll earn you one ‘bad girl’ and a dirty look. Look, I’m the one getting my ass in trouble here when I don’t show back up to class. So either you tell me what’s going on here or I’m gone.”

  She just looks at me all wild for a second, and I can tell she don’t want to say what’s going on. I sort of felt bad, but at the same time I don’t like being anybody’s sucker…especially some chick who thinks she can just walk all over guys because she’s hot. The minute you let them go down that road, they stop respecting you

  So I start heading for the door again.

  “Corvin!” she starts crying. “I’m being haunted! Lamar Tarlington is after me!”

  Yeah, that’s right. That’s what she said. And I looked at her the same way you’re looking at me right now.

  “What? Wait,” I shook my head, “you mean the guy in that story from our field trip last week? The one who cut off those kids heads?”

  “Yes! Him! When I looked out the window in English class, I saw him standing there and looking in at me! And he had this huge knife or machete thing! I know this sounds crazy but I think Barry may have done something really stupid and now I’ve got the Necromancer after me!”

  *At this point of the statement, I think it will be helpful for the purpose of clarification to insert a piece of local history about the “ghost” the suspect is referring to.

  Lamar Tarlington was a 19th century figure and an extended member of the already established Tarlingtons of Collinsdale. He emigrated from Britain in 1894, and took up residence in the large family house that sat on a forty-acre property on the edge of town. The farm and family at that time was headed by Edgar Tarlington, a wealthy landowner and businessman in the community.

  Lamar was single, 35 years of age, and cut a striking figure in this small town with his dark hair, heavy mustache, and European suits. As a gentleman of his time, his interests and pursuits also set him apart from the normal population of Collinsdale, especially his interests in spiritualism…which caused some remark. But since spiritualism and similar hobbies were all the rage in Europe and the East Coast in those times, most locals initially played it down as him simply following the fashions of the idle rich.

  So at first his eccentricities were ignored.

  As it turned out, his predilections went far beyond a mere hobby. What nobody in Collinsdale knew at the time was that Lamar Tarlington had fled England one step ahead of the law. A secret circle of occultists headed by him had been exposed in an incident involving grave-robbing and two murdered transient women. Scotland Yard arrested most of the circle, but Lamar slipped out of the country on a steamer to Belgium with an associate. The associate later turned up in Antwerp, floating face-down in the river, but the European law lost track of Lamar at this point.

  Due to the poor communication of the times, when Lamar showed up in Collinsdale he was able to resume his life with impunity. It is unknown to this day if Edgar Tarlington had any knowledge of his foreign nephew’s previous activities, but he later claimed he didn’t. Considering his decision that led to the incident of June 17th, 1895, he was most likely telling the truth.

  By that time, Lamar’s behavior was starting to cause consternation in the community despite his pretensions of merely being a dabbler of spiritualism. Locals spotted him on several occasions wandering through the town graveyard, which made
no sense because his family members were all buried in a private plot on their own property. There didn’t seem to be any legitimate reason for him being there. One spooked alderman reported that while confronting Lamar in the cemetery one evening, the man claimed to be a ‘necromancer,’ a sorcerer of the dead. He demonstrated by whistling an odd tune that was immediately answered by several other whistles from different corners of the darkened graveyard.

  This, and other stories, were going around the small town and starting to cause distress in the population. But apparently none of them had yet reached the ears of the Tarlington patriarch yet, for in June he decided to take a trip with his wife to New Orleans and leave their three children at home in the care of the housekeeper…and their ‘Uncle Lamar.’ What happened next would forever put the Tarlington House high on the list of famous macabre landmarks.

  On the very next day after Edgar’s departure, Lamar ordered the housekeeper to have the Tarlington stableman ready the buggy and accompany her into town to pick up a list of items. She was loathe to do this, and leave the children alone with him, but had no grounds to object. So the woman did as instructed and spent the better part of the morning shopping in town. She made her last purchase at eleven in Mather’s Clothing Store before heading back for home.

  Upon reaching the Tarlington house, she instructed the stableman to drop her off at the front before sending him on around to the back of the house to bring the purchases in through the rear entrance. She later confessed to taking this action because she had a “bad feeling” about what Lamar may be up to and wanted to leave him with no unobstructed exit in case they caught him at something untoward.

  Instead, she walked into a slaughterhouse.

  As soon as she opened the front door, the housekeeper spied bloody shoe prints leading from the closed salon back toward the rear of the house. She screamed for the stableman, and when he arrived they opened the doors to the room to reveal the first part of the grisly handiwork that Lamar Tarlington had performed in their absence. All three children…twelve-year-old Annette Tarlington, and her twin ten-year-old brothers, Samuel and Phillip…were dead. Their small bodies lay on the blood drenched floor of the salon, minus their heads.

  The stableman raced back into town to fetch the Sheriff, dropping the housekeeper off at the first neighbor’s house he passed. Within half an hour, a small group of armed townspeople returned to the Tarlington estate. After viewing the carnage in the salon, they determined that Lamar had taken all three children into the room before locking the door and murdering them all together. And judging by the single set of bloody footprints and accompanying blood drips, he then left the room carrying the severed heads by their hair.

  The party had no difficulty following the gore spattered trail through the house and out the back door. It took a little more effort on their part to discern it from there, but many of these men were seasoned hunters and possessed skills up to the task. They tracked the killer’s path from the house, out around behind the barn, and finally to a disused corn silo a short way down the hill. It was there they found the second testament to Lamar Tarlington’s madness.

  The door to the silo had some form of arcane symbol scrawled on its surface, probably from the blood of one of the victims. A metal bucket sitting next to the door contained a paintbrush and its inside was coated with drying gore. They realized Lamar must have filled the bucket from one of the bodies and carried it down with the heads from the house. Tracks around the entrance indicated the killer had been in and out of the building several times that morning.

  Drawing his gun, the Sheriff pushed open the door and stepped inside. In his later years he admitted he didn’t give any warning in the hopes of surprising Tarlington into doing something stupid and giving him cause to shoot the monster on the spot. His hope turned out to be in vain.

  The killer was dead.

  The interior of the corn silo looked like some hellish version of an ancient temple. Strange runes and symbols covered the walls as high as eight feet. These appeared to be drawn in charcoal. The floor was a different matter. Tarlington had painted a large circle, touched at three points by a crimson triangle within. A child’s head sat at each point of the triangle, facing toward the center. Behind each head, the madman had propped up large mirrors he must have scavenged from different dressers and bathrooms of the house.

  Then Lamar Tarlington had apparently knelt in the center of this diagram, and cut his own throat.

  Evidence recovered afterwards included a chest full of spiritualist pamphlets and flyers that seemed to have been received in the mail and stored unopened or ignored. On the other hand, a small trunk in Lamar’s bedroom revealed the existence of three books bound in old leather and filled with horrific designs. It was written in a language unknown to anyone in the area. Unfortunately these fell into the hands of the judge, who doubled as one of the local preachers, and he burned them in front of his church as an object lesson to his congregation on how to deal with evil before it can corrupt weak minds.

  The legend of Lamar Tarlington was not so easily erased. The locals never forgot, and often referred to him as The Necromancer due to the encounter with the alderman in the grave yard. Some townsfolk claim they still hear strange whistles in the cemetery. Also, two different employees at the Tarlington house have quit without notice while claiming they saw Lamar Tarlington looking in a window at them. So there is a history of ghost stories associated with this character.

  Edgar Tarlington tore down the corn silo, and moved what remained of his family to New Orleans. He didn’t sell the house though, choosing to leave it sitting empty for several years instead, before renovating it and leasing it out. This arrangement continued for the next thirty years before a branch of the Tarlington family moved back into the house and resumed living there. The house still belongs to what remains of the Tarlington clan. It has been restored and furnished with turn of the century furniture, and converted into a private museum. Many of the personal items of the Tarlington family, including Lamar Tarlington, were recovered and used for display. Lamar Tarlington’s bedroom was restored to look as it did when he lived there and many of his surviving personal effects are kept in that room.

  A large portrait of the man hangs on the bedroom wall.

  It has been confirmed that the museum gave tours for the classes containing Laura Taylor, Barry Price, and Corvin Bradshaw the week before the crime.

  With this now explained, I return to Corvin Bradshaws statement.

  That’s right. That’s what she said. She said The Necromancer was after her. That she had seen him staring at her through the window, and that he had a big knife of some kind with him. I was beginning to think maybe she belonged back in the nurse’s office, after all.

  “Lamar Tarlington?” I’m making it plain I’m having a hard time with this. “The Lamar Tarlington is after you? The dude’s been dead for like ten thousand years and now his ghost decides to skip across town and pick on you? Why, because he don’t like cheerleaders or something?”

  “He’s only been dead a little over a hundred years, you dope,” she says like she’s all smart or something, but I can tell she’s still panicky. “And I think the reason he’s after me is because Barry might have stolen something from him.”

  Okay, now that caused my ears to perk up. Hearing that a guy like Barry Price pulled a lowdown is always music to my ears. It just proves my point that some people ain’t near as good as they like to pretend they are, but it’s always guys like me that get busted even when I didn’t do nothing.

  “So how do you steal something from a dead guy? And what does that have to do with you?”

  “Remember the field trip?” she’s asks. “Remember how we had to hold up the buses when we left because Barry had to make an emergency run back into the house to go to the bathroom?”

  I remembered that. And if you’ll check, there should be a lot of other people who remember that too, detective. We were all sort of pissed about it at the ti
me.

  “Anyway,” she goes on. “Yesterday was my birthday, and Barry gave me this really nice present. It was this old fashioned fountain pen made out of real silver. It had fancy scrollwork all over and my initials on the side. At the time I thought it was really thoughtful and sweet.”

  “So? If it had your initials on it…”

  “My initials are LT! Get it? Laura Taylor! Lamar Tarlington! He must have seen that pen in Tarlington’s room and went back to steal it!”

  “Oh…” I’m still trying to picture a toady like Barry Price having the guts to swipe anything, much less something like that. But I guess impressing a chick can even make a tool like Barry grow a pair…if not a brain to go along with them.

  “Yeah…oh! And now I’ve got the pen and that evil son of a bitch is after me! I’ve got to get home and get that thing back to Barry so he can put it back!”

  I gotta admit, I was loving this stuff up to that point. This whole situation had karma written all over it. She was so freaked out I was even thinking of offering to return the pen myself, just to see if I could horn in on a little of Barry’s action. Hell, I could have done a better job of it than that idiot anyways.

  But that was when Laura starting screaming.

  I was just getting ready to see what she thought about me returning the pen, when she starts pointing at the door and shrieking like she’s lost her mind. I almost crapped my pants on the spot, just because of her screaming all of a sudden like that. But when I turned to see what she was pointing at…aw hell… I almost had a heart attack.

  The doors in the old part of the school have those diamond shaped windows in them. You know, the types with the little wires running through the glass. Well, when I looked over to see what she was freaking out about…