by West, Sam
And then he faded away completely so that Jane came crashing down to the table, just as Malcom and Sean leapt forward in an attempt to break her fall. They were only partly successful, and her thighs hit the table-top with a sickening crack, the bulk of her torso slamming awkwardly against Malcom. Her knee jerked into Sean’s jaw and he went sprawling backwards, his ears ringing and everything going fuzzy around him. He landed on his rump with a sickening smack, his back propped up against the oven.
A heavy weight thumped against him, and he realised that it was Amber, her arms thrown around his shoulders and her face buried in the side of his neck. Her sobbing got suddenly louder as his hearing and vision cleared.
He saw Malcom and Jane on the other side of the kitchen, they too sprawled on the ground like him and Amber.
His blood turned to ice in his veins when he saw Him standing over them. The creature was no longer transparent, and Sean watched in mute terror as it reached down its arms and picked up Jane like she weighed no more than a ragdoll. He lifted her up again, pinning her to the wall by her throat. Her feet kicked and her face turned from pink to red to purple in a matter of seconds.
Instantly, Malcom was on his feet and clawing at the creature, but his hands went straight through him every time. With what seemed like deliberate slowness, the shadow-man raised his knifed-hand, and pushed his fingers into her chest. Slowly, he drew his hand downwards, disembowelling her.
Her guts spilled out in a wet heap onto the floor; coils upon coils of pinkish-brown intestines, accompanied by a geisha of blood.
Amber screamed in his ear, momentarily deafening him.
And then it was Malcom’s turn. The creature let go of Jane and she flopped to the floor, landing in an ungainly heap on her own insides.
He reached for Malcom, his arms like two striking Cobras. Holding the screaming, terrified man by his upper arms, he picked him up a few inches off the floor and brought him towards his body. The thing opened its shadowy mouth, wider and wider. At first, Sean thought he was imagining it, but the shadow-man was definitely growing bigger, filling up more and more of the kitchen. His mouth unhinged like a snake, yawning ever wider.
Sean was reminded of a painting that had always creeped him out. He couldn’t remember the name of the artist, but he remembered the title.
Satan devouring his son.
The painting where the devil held the body of a naked, armless, headless body, as he munched on the other, half-eaten arm.
Malcom’s screaming head disappeared into the thing’s gaping maw, and then his cries were cut dead, his arms and legs falling limp.
The thing gulped, and for a second, Sean fancied he glimpsed Malcom’s wide-eyed head disappear down the thing’s gullet, before He gained solidity once more.
The infernal creature appeared to be shrinking again, and then it swivelled its head in their direction. Even though Sean couldn’t see the thing’s eyes beneath the rim of the constantly distorting hat, he felt the weight of its empty stare.
Without seeing how he got there, the shadow-man was upon them. Effortlessly, he plucked the screaming Amber out of his embrace, and threw her against the wall next to the cooker.
He swiped at the creature, but his hands went right through him, making them freeze like he had plunged them into ice-water. He watched on helplessly as his knifed hand slipped between Amber’s legs and disappeared up inside her.
She screamed like a banshee as blood erupted between her thighs, instantly saturating her beige trousers and pooling around her on the tiled-floor.
“No, no, no, you bastard,” Sean screamed, doing the only thing he could think of doing, which was reaching behind himself and turning on all four gas rings and the oven.
The gas hissed out in a steady, noisy stream, nauseating and awful, making his nostrils flare and his head spin. The creature didn’t seem to notice as it tore the now silent Amber to shreds, plunging his knives into her over and over. He yanked open the oven-door right by his head and promptly retched all over the floor.
“Fuck you,” Sean whispered, heaving up all the red wine in a foul stream of acidity.
Weakly, he fumbled in the front-pocket of his ripped jeans for his lighter. His thoughts were getting clouded, his reflexes dulling. Amber was already dead, there was nothing he could do now to help her.
But he could still help himself, and he could destroy the infernal game in the process. His vison dimmed as he became aware that the monster had stopped tearing Amber apart and its sightless gaze was fixed upon him.
For a ghastly moment, his numb fingers wouldn’t cooperate and skidded uselessly over the lighter. Just as the creature stretched out its arms for him, the lighter sparked into life. The air wavered with the seeping gas, like a desert mirage, and then brilliant light exploded all around him.
Sean died instantly, taking the house with him.
EPILOGUE
A small crowd had gathered outside the burning house.
“Everyone back!” one of the firemen bellowed into his loud-speaker. “Go down to the harbourfront, the police will be there.”
The smoke was thick and frightening in the air, and ten-year-old Ethan huddled close to his mum. He and his recently divorced mother lived six doors down from the burning house.
“Thank God it’s raining,” his mum said, more to herself than to him.
“Why are the police here?” he gasped. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I know, honey,” his mother soothed. “It’s just what happens when a house goes up like that in a gas explosion. They just want the area evacuated in case the other houses catch alight. The police want to talk everyone, that’s all. They want to make sure we’re okay.”
“Are they going to blame us?”
Her mother laughed, but it didn’t sound very convincing to Ethan. “No sweetie, they’re just doing their job.”
“Did anyone die, Mummy?”
Ethan thought of the man that lived in the house. A fisherman. He was always friendly, and was about the same age as his mum.
“I don’t know, baby. I don’t even know if there was anyone in. What’s that you’re clutching?”
Instinctively, Ethan tucked the board game more firmly in his armpit. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he felt very protective of it. When he and Mum had rushed outside on hearing the explosion, along with everyone else that lived on the street, the oblong box in the middle of the road had caught his eye. When his mum’s back was turned talking to a neighbour, he had rushed over and scooped it up.
And the weird thing about it was, it was like the rain had fallen around the box, rather than on it. But now that he thought about, Ethan figured that he had just been imagining it.
“Nothing. I mean, it’s a game I was holding in my bedroom,” he lied. “I guess I was still holding it when we came outside.”
The Game of Shadows… I wonder what sort of game it is? he thought.
She frowned. “Really? I didn’t notice. Never mind, come on, we have to go,” she said, just as a uniformed police officer approached them.
“Please move down to the harbourfront,” the man said, encouraging the crowd to disperse.
She steered him in the direction of the seafront, and he cast a final glance at the burning house.
For a second, he was sure he saw a shadowy figure in the downstairs window, the flames licking around him.
He blinked, and the vision was gone.
Ethan followed his mum to the seafront, the game hugged tightly to his chest.
The End.
Hello Reader, you’ve reached the end of Shadow Games. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the story. Below, I have enclosed the first chapter of the extreme horror novel, Her Father’s Mistake. But please be warned, it is a lot more gruesome than Shadow Games.
If you’re new to me, thank you very much for investing your time in this book and seeing it through to the end. If you’re someone that keeps coming back for more, thank you so much. I
wouldn’t be doing this without your continued support and I can’t even begin to say how humbled I am that you read my stories.
Until next time,
Sam.
HER FATHER’S MISTAKE:
AN EXTREME HORROR NOVEL
Claire Atwood sat on the windowsill in her bedroom with her chin resting on her bare knees, smoking out of the window.
“Shit,” she said, on hearing a creaking on the landing on the other side of the door.
Quickly, she lobbed the half-smoked fag, but she wasn’t quick enough. Her mother burst through the door, her face flushed and eyes flashing. Her mum was a petite, fine-featured, composed and icy-cool blonde who looked much younger than her forty-five years. But now she just looked like a crazed bag-lady that had been possessed by the devil, further enhanced by the fact she was wearing her husband’s grey-flannel pyjama bottoms, and one of his ancient, fraying t-shirts that completely swamped her slight figure with a picture of the group ‘Soundgarden’ emblazoned across her chest.
“I knew I could smell smoke. Jesus Christ, Claire, I can’t believe you’re smoking,” she said, her eyes still bleary from sleep and her usually immaculate, shoulder length hair sticking up every which way.
Claire slid off the windowsill, tugging at the hem of her too-short, faded to the point of invisibility, Winnie the Pooh nightshirt. It barely covered her crotch and she knew she should’ve chucked it out years ago, seeing as she was no longer a five foot five, skinny thirteen-year-old, but a five foot ten, heavily curved, nineteen-year-old. But somehow, she couldn’t bare to part with it, just like she couldn’t bare to part with ‘Boris’, her mangy old teddy-bear with one eye that she still cuddled every night.
“Mum, God, why didn’t you knock?”
“Why didn’t I knock?” she repeated in a shrill voice. “Er, let me think. Oh, I know, it’s because this happens to be my house, and therefore this is my room, and I do not believe you are smoking in it. Oh my God, Claire, how long have you been smoking? Do you want to die? I can’t believe you would let me down like this.”
“Is there something you wanted, Mother?” she asked with a flick of her waist length, blonde hair.
But she was finding it very hard to be disdainful when dressed in her Winnie the Pooh nightshirt and flashing her knickers.
“Yes, there bloody well is, as it happens. So I just called up Janice, and she said she bloody well fired you two weeks ago.”
Oh, fucking shit, here we go…
“Why did you call Janice? Are you spying on me?”
Claire knew she had been caught out – a double-whammy with the smoking, no less – but still she couldn’t seem to stop herself from going into self-defence mode.
“No, you ungrateful little brat, I’m not spying on you. And don’t you dare backchat me. Where the hell have you been when you were supposed to be working?”
Claire had the good grace to look a little sheepish, because God, this was just so embarrassing.
“You know, hanging out with friends, and stuff.”
“Hanging out with friends?” her mum said. “Hanging out with friends and stuff?”
For God’s sake, why does she have to repeat everything I say, like, twice?
“Yes. That’s right.”
“What the hell were you thinking? Why didn’t you tell us? What have you been doing with these friends? I presume by friends you mean a boy, and you’re out having sex, and smoking and drinking. Are you taking drugs?”
“What? No! How could you even think that?”
No point mentioning that she was a virgin and didn’t drink… And as for fags, she only smoked a few a day when things got too stressful.
“Oh, I don’t know, because somewhere along the line you turned into a pathological liar. Oh God, what have I ever done to make you like this? I only called up the restaurant to plead with Janice to let you have tonight off. The McQueens are desperate for a babysitter as their live-in nanny is having a family crisis and had to fly back to America. And the other girl they were going to use because you couldn’t do it because you couldn’t possibly get out of your shift at the restaurant has let them down. So I asked Jeff to give me ten minutes to see if I could get you to do it.”
“You had no right to do that, I’m not a bloody kid. You can’t just call up my work and ask if I can have the night off. You could’ve got me sacked.”
Her mum laughed, but it sounded more like a dog barking. “You are kidding me, right?” Her eyes narrowed to slits as she pointed a finger at her. “And I have every right, young lady. All the time you live under our roof, you abide by our rules.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Jeff McQueen is a sleaze. The only reason he wants me to babysit his devil-spawn is because he wants to get inside my knickers.”
The colour drained from her mum’s face, and inwardly she cringed. Just because it was the truth, it probably didn’t follow that she should go out of her way to goad her.
“I’m calling your father.”
“Fine. And I’m going out.”
“No, you’re really not, you’re staying right where you are. In fact, you’re grounded.”
“Grounded? I’m bloody nineteen-years-old, you can’t ground me!”
“If you know what’s good for you, you will not leave this house until I say so.”
Their eyes locked like two warring cats. Claire may have been a teenager, and she may have been spoilt, but she wasn’t a bitch. She’d been lucky with the parent lottery and even at her relatively tender age, she understood and respected that.
Her mum was basically pretty cool, and so was her dad, when it came down to it. Okay, so they had been a little on the strict side when she was growing-up, but the strictness was never born of malice.
Claire sighed heavily. “I was going to tell you, I just didn’t want to upset you. I was going to tell you when I found another job.”
“Upset me? Upset me? You lie to me, to us, and you’re smoking. What else aren’t you telling me? I knew this year-out plan was a bad idea. I’ll get a job and save up some money, she says. I’ll get my driving-licence before I go to Uni, she says. But oh no, change of plan, I’ll smoke, lie, drink, and put it about like a cheap tart instead. Christ, Claire, why can’t you be more like your brother?”
Her mum’s words stung as surely as a slap across the face, leaving her too stunned to reply. She knew she wasn’t like that, so then why was she being such a bitch to her? And even though she had been expecting her to play the brother card, it still stung. Ryan, her elder brother by ten months, could do no wrong in her parents’ eyes. Which massively got on her tits because she knew for a fact that her darling brother was rather fond of the old Bavarian Marching Powder and was a total man-whore.
It’s so unfair…
“I’m going to call your father, and if you leave this house, I swear to God, your life as you know it will turn into a living hell.”
She turned on her heels and stalked from the room with admirable dignity, considering she was dressed like a homeless person or a mental patient.
When she was gone, Claire curled up against the headboard and cried like a baby.
CHAPTER TWO
“So to sum up, Paul, I’m sorry to say that we are going to have to let you go.”
Paul Breed just stared at his boss dumbfounded, his backside wedged undignifiedly in the tiny plastic chair. Surely he hadn’t heard right? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all.
Just tell him the truth.
But he couldn’t. Where would he even start? Every last thing that James Atwood thought he knew about him was a lie.
Everything else aside, this was the first proper job he’d had in ages and things had been going so well. Well, this was the first proper job since ever, if truth be told.
And now this.
Had the mighty James Atwood found out that his entire CV was complete bullshit? That he hadn’t, in fact, been working in a fictional office in Lancaster for the past three years? H
ad the bastard found out that for the duration of his twenty-five years, he had been in and out of numerous care-homes, foster-homes and mental institutions? Had he found out that he was a thief, an ex-drug-dealer, and a murderer?
Is this where my journey ends? Have the police finally caught up with me?
“Let me go? But I thought I was doing well,” he said tentatively, his head in a tailspin.
He had been so sure that James Atwood had invited him into his office this Monday morning to offer him a contract.
“Your three-week probation period is up tomorrow. I’m really sorry, but ultimately, I just feel that you are not a good fit for our company. Of course, I will be happy to give you a glowing reference for your future employer. I…”
James Atwood’s mobile-phone rang on his desk – the Doctor Who theme – interrupting his stream of words.
Hatred bubbled in Paul’s guts; pure acid and venom that made him want to lean over the wide, oak desk and rip out the cunt’s throat.
At least he’s just sacking me because he doesn’t like me, and not because he knows…
“God, I’m sorry, I have to take this, the wife never calls the mobile unless it’s a dire emergency… Yes?” he snapped into the phone. “Is this important? What?... She did?... Look, can this wait? I’m in the middle of something here….”
Atwood fell silent, listening to his ranting wife, his expression stony. Paul strained his ears, trying to catch what Mrs Atwood was saying, but he couldn’t pick out any individual words. It was like in those old-fashioned cartoons where the woman speaking on the other end of the line ranted and nagged at incomprehensible, high-pitched speed.
“Just tell her from me she’s grounded and I’ll deal with her when I get home. Yes, I am fully aware that she’s nineteen, but all the while she lives under our roof, she will abide by our rules…. Oh good Lord, you said what? No wonder she’s upset… Yes, yes, I know it’s not your fault… Look, can we do this later?”