Fright Mare-Women Write Horror

by Неизвестный

  “Honey, it’s me. Can you hear me?” she asked.

  It was difficult, but he managed the briefest of nods. Two more people came into view. His son and one of his daughters.

  “Honey, you’ve had a stroke. The doctors ...” his wife faltered, her own eyes welling.

  His son took over for her. He looked grave, but not particularly grieved. “Dad ... the doctors say the stroke was massive. It’s going to be touch and go. You’ve got a lot of recovery time ahead of you. You’ll have to do everything they tell you, you understand? We don’t want you sliding backwards ... ”

  His son was still talking, but the heretic lost track of what was being said. His daughter, also looking grave but not particularly grieved, was squinting at him and saying, “Dad? Dad?”

  His wife was saying, “Honey? Can you hear us? Honey, are you still with us?”

  Their words began to jumble, then flow together. Try as he might to keep his eyes open, they slid shut. He lost control of his thoughts as easily as he had lost control of his eyelids, unsure of what was being said in the present ...

  “Honey, can you hear?”

  “Dad! Try to stay with us.”

  ... what had been said just a few minutes ago ...

  “We don’t want you sliding backwards.”

  ... what was being said now ...

  “Stat! Stat! We’re losing him!”

  ... and what had been said in the past.

  “When you die, your final thoughts are very important ...”

  “Reincarnation evokes images of flesh reanimating ... dead bodies being possessed ... ”

  “For all I know we’re born once, twice, forwards or backwards ...”

  ***

  He awoke to the sound of water rushing beneath his skull. Beyond that he heard groaning and weeping and something that sounded like timber getting ready to drop. He tried to gasp, his mouth working like a carp, but it filled again, his nose closed off ...

  He bolted upright, twisted to the right and heaved. It was blood and vomit that had been choking him, keeping him from breathing. His nose was open now and he realized why he hadn’t been able to breathe through it. His arm had been lying across his face. And he realized, too, that he must have fallen unconscious and had been carried back to where he was now, where he had been tossed like a sack of feed. His whole body ached. His jaw throbbed. He felt a molar gone and blood still oozing in the socket. His rectum, and even deeper inside, burned like he had just passed acid.

  Now he wished his nose was still closed. There was a stench like a sewer, things nudging against him ... some slick and feverish, some cold and clammy. He looked down through the gloom and realized he’d vomited on someone’s legs. But they hadn’t moved.

  He scrambled to his feet, only to find it hard to stand. The whole floor swayed with a slow rhythm, and he was upright only a moment before falling hard on his hip. When he did, he looked down instinctively and, at first, he told himself his skin wasn’t really as dark as it looked. It was the gloom of this place that made his arms look that way. But then he turned one hand palm up, to see the pale-pink of it.

  This wasn’t the worse shock. It took a few minutes for the real one to register. He had young, full breasts and a flat, sunken belly, above a nest of pubic hair. No penis. He cried out and jammed his hand where his manhood should have been. Instead he found the smooth trough between labia. The touch of his own hand against his body was so painful he jerked back. His palm came up smeared with blood.

  Something rattled behind him and he heard a voice, startled and raspy, speaking in a language he shouldn’t be able to understand. But he did.

  “Daughter? Daughter? Afia, is that you?”

  He turned and made out a gaunt black woman in rags, grappling toward him and trailing chains. The chains stopped her a foot short before reaching him, and the yank tugged at the ankle of a man, who sat up complaining. The woman began to blubber and babble, but still the heretic understood every foreign word she was saying.

  “You’re alive! How ... how can that be? I saw them carry you in. I saw them myself, toss you among the dead!”

  “Who are you?” the heretic demanded, then stopped short. His voice was high-pitched and girlish. He was speaking a language he’d never heard before.

  The woman recoiled as if his question was a physical blow and she began to wail. This brought the man she was chained with to her side, whispering harshly, “Quiet! Quiet! Do you want to bring them down here? Quiet!”

  “Where am I?” the heretic asked them.

  The man glanced his way, then talked to the woman again. “Quiet! At least she’s alive. Beaten and raped witless, but alive after all. Maybe her wits will return with time.”

  “Where the hell am I?” the heretic shouted, caught between terror and rage.

  The man hissed, “Shut up, you stupid girl! They’ll hear you!”

  But the man’s warnings were in vain. A light bloomed over the heretic’s shoulder. As he turned he saw a man, looking like he’d stepped right out of a maritime museum, holding a lantern and climbing down a ship’s ladder. The clatter of chains against sea timber rang in all directions and countless voices murmured with dread and despair.

  The sailor was followed by two more men. When his gaze fell on the heretic, he stopped short.

  “Damn my eyes! The captain’s bed warmer’s still alive!”

  Looking uninterested, the two other men shouldered past him, going for the three bodies that lay chainless. “One less I gotta chuck overboard,” said one, bending to his task.

  “Fuck all, this one’s been puked on!” said the other.

  Complaining all the while, the men grabbed the fouled corpse under its knees and armpits, hoisted it up and shuffled back toward the ship’s ladder. The sailor with the lantern reached down, grabbed the heretic by the jaw and brought the light closer. He, the heretic, tried to resist. But his new body was a young one; weakened by poor rations, illness and the beatings taken while struggling against rape after rape.

  The sailor grinned. More to himself than to the heretic, he said, “Damn sure thought you’d been played out. But you might make it to shore after all. Till then ... if the captain’s done with ya ... toss a bucket of seawater over ya ... yeh ... you'll clean up right enough for me.” He grabbed the heretic’s arm and hauled him up the ship’s ladder.

  Tampa Bay Magazine calls her work "otherworldly." The Gothic Journal describes her writing is "stunning" and "fresh" with suspense that "is razor sharp." "Totally addictive," says the Eternal Night Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror review site. Tampa Book Buzz says she "pulls you in from the first sentence," and the Good, the Bad and the Bizarre review site writes, "[K.L. Nappier's] wonderful writing ability is only dwarfed by the storytelling..."For more information about K.L. Nappier's novels and books, visit Kathy’s website at www.klnappier.com

  CITY GIRL

  by

  KATHRYN PTACEK

  The car passed through an open gate, and Tessa knew they'd reached the farm, even though she'd never been to one before. She was through and through a city girl, even at the age of ten.

  She didn't know why her parents brought her along to this place. She'd have been just as happy to stay home and read a book, but Mom and Dad claimed she needed "some fresh air." So they'd bundled her into the old Buick, and they drove out into the country. She had no idea how far they'd come or how long it had been. Her parents, who normally talked in the car, had remained quiet. Once, she'd asked a question, and her father had glanced sideways at her mother, but no one answered.

  She hadn't even played games on her cell phone to pass the time because her mother had taken it from her backpack and said, "Let's leave the tech stuff at home for once." Which she thought was odd because her folks always insisted she carry the phone with her, no matter where she went.

  So, mostly she stared out the windows at the trees and the few buildings flashing by. They went through a lot of woods, and she didn't think she'd r
ecognize anything again because her dad had been driving fast, faster than usual.

  Now, as they got out of the car, she thought the farm looked pretty much like those she'd seen in books and in the movies. Her dad knocked on the front door of the house, and a smiling guy opened the screen and ushered them into a plain room. It didn't have much furniture, Tessa thought, and what was there seemed kind of worn--but clean, though--and she realized there were no paintings on the walls, unlike her own house where her mom and dad hung the watercolors and pastels they'd completed over the years. But she had friends whose houses had no paintings in them ... no books, either, which she always thought strange.

  Her father introduced her mom and her to the man, and she smiled shyly. She wasn't sure what she should do, and she shifted from one foot to the other. A woman--maybe the farmer's wife--stood in the doorway to the kitchen but didn't come into the front room.

  "Hank and Robin are outside," the farmer said. "Why don't you go and find them?"

  Tessa glanced at her mother, who nodded permission, and she left the room, letting the screen door swing shut behind her. She walked down the wooden steps with their peeling grey paint and studied the farmyard. Across from her sat a big red barn, some smaller buildings, a lot of trees and fields beyond those, and an old rusted truck resting on cinder blocks. She nearly laughed at that, because that was the kind of scene her dad would paint, and she wanted to tell him through the screen that he ought to see this, but when she turned, she saw her father watching her, and he reached over and pushed the inner door shut.

  That was definitely weird, she told herself. Were they here for lunch or dinner? Maybe her parents were going to paint while they were visiting, although they hadn't packed any of their art supplies. She had asked her mom, who had murmured something as she left the room that morning, and then she hadn't had a chance to ask again. That strange atmosphere in the car ride had quelled any questions she might have, but now that she was here, she had a dozen or more she wanted to ask.

  So there were kids here? She wondered what they did during the day. They probably had chores, but maybe they went to school. Or did they? Maybe they were homeschooled like her friend down the street. Maybe this was one of those farms that kept kids as slave laborers. She'd read about such places online before her mother made her shut down the computer. Kids were kidnapped from cities and brought out there, and they worked from dawn to dusk, and sometimes no one rescued them.

  She glanced down at her hands ... little and pale ... not accustomed to hard work. She didn't even like to help her mom with the garden because she always got dirt on her fingers or a sticker in her palm. She didn't like that. Of course, her mother always made her wash her hands right after, and she would pull the splinter out and put medicine and a bandage on it, so that was all right. Tessa smiled at the memory.

  She followed a path of crushed stone past a vegetable garden and then past a well. It looked like all the wishing wells she saw in books, and she wondered if it was real, or maybe it was just for show, like the tiny Dutch windmill in their neighbor's yard.

  She paused to rest her hands on the stones around the well and peered inside. She didn't see anything, and she didn't hear anything. Fake, she decided. But then she heard something make a little sound far below, and she caught a glimmer ... there was water down there but it was a long way down. She shuddered and backed away.

  Tessa kept walking and gazing at the various things and wondering where the kids were.

  Finally, she heard some voices, and as she rounded the side of a building, she saw a boy and a girl picking flowers. She stood there for a minute, and knew she should say hi, but her shyness crept over her, and she remained silent.

  Finally, the boy--maybe a few years younger than the girl--saw her and nudged his sister, who glanced up from the chain of flowers she was making with button-sized white daisies.

  "Hi," the girl said.

  The boy just nodded.

  "They told me to come out here."

  "That's okay. We're just playing. Want to make a flower chain?"

  "Sure." She knew how they were made, but had never done that before--her mother always said that the flowers she grew in her garden were to admire outside and not be picked.

  "I'm Robin. This is Hank. Where you from?"

  "The city."

  The brother and sister shared a look.

  Tessa tried not to frown. What was with all these looks today?

  "Ever been to a farm before?" Robin asked, as she finished her chain and swiftly looped it to make it into a crown. Robin handed Tessa some flowers, and she tried to bend the stalks the way Robin had.

  "No. This is my first time."

  "We'll show you around, Tessa!" Hank said as he reached out and grabbed her hand to lead her, while Robin placed the crown of flowers on Tessa's head.

  "Thanks!" Odd, she thought; they knew her name, but she hadn't told them.

  The girl bobbed her head in response.

  They checked out the shed housing the tractors and various tools, and the boy explained how each weird thing worked. Tessa asked a lot of questions; she thought these rusting tools were pretty interesting; some of them seemed scary, too--like the things she saw in those horror movies that she wasn't supposed to watch. But she wondered if they were used any more ... if they were, why was there rust?

  From there, they wandered through a mowed field, where she saw several two-drawer dressers. She ran up to one and started pulling open the drawer. Why would anyone stick furniture out here? She wondered, but Hank grabbed her hand.

  "No! Don't you see the bees around here? These are hives, and if you disturb them, the bees will come out and sting you to death."

  Tessa took a step back, then another one. The boy's face had twisted into a savage expression while he'd explained about the bees. She'd been stung once or twice by a bee, and her mother had put ice on her finger, and that had made the pain better. But these bees in their weird hives scared her. The boy kind of scared her. He was staring at her now.

  "No, I don't want to be stung," she admitted.

  They walked some more, then the girl grabbed her arm once to steer her away from boards on the ground. "Old well," she said.

  "You have a lot of wells on this farm," Tessa said.

  She shrugged. "Some go dry after a while. Then we board them up because they're kind of deep."

  "Oh, okay." She didn't know what else to say to these kids. "Do you have a lot of chores to do?"

  "Sometimes," the boy replied as his eyes slid over to the girl, then quickly away.

  "We have something else to show you," Robin said after a moment. "Follow me."

  They walked single-file toward another small building with no windows. It had a wire fence around it; Hank opened the door and said, "Go in."

  Tessa did, having to duck her head a bit, and suddenly the door slammed shut, and she heard a wooden board slide into place.

  She pushed at the door. Hank had locked it from outside. Now, she could hear the boy and the girl giggling. She paused and blinked so her eyes could adjust to the darkness. Here and there, little shafts of sunlight slipped in through cracks between the wallboards, but she still couldn't see much. The air was thick and smelled strange, and now that she wasn't moving she heard a rustling sound--not from just one spot but from a dozen or more. She bit her lip. She blinked again, listened ... tried to see in the darkness. Then she heard what sounded like a low-throated cluck. Was this the chicken coop? She didn't move away from the door. She didn't know how close the chickens were, and she didn't want to step on one of them--or on an egg.

  A few dust motes danced in the light that shafted into the coop through tiny holes in the wooden walls.

  Still, she didn't say anything. If she banged on the door, would the kids respond? They probably thought they had a scaredy-cat here, a city girl who was afraid of everything, especially unfamiliar country stuff. She wasn't frightened. Not of chickens. The bees, yes ... and those kids made her u
neasy, but chickens were okay. Weren't they?

  She didn't know how much time had gone by, but it had to be at least five minutes, maybe ten or fifteen. She wished she had worn her watch today. She could have just made out the time with the little light she had.

  She didn't hear the kids outside the coop speaking. They were waiting. Waiting for her to crack. Like a chicken egg. She shuddered.

  Something shifted in the corner. A chicken, she told herself. She was in a coop, after all. That's all it was. It smelled like dust in here, and something else ... chicken poop, she guessed, and she wrinkled her nose at that. There was a thick coppery smell, too, but she didn't know what it was.

  Time went by, and she sat down, her back to the door. Hank and Robin were no doubt having a great time as they played this trick on her. She thought they'd gone off somewhere else because she couldn't hear them speaking, not even whispering. She hoped they'd come back soon, but what if they didn't? What would she do? Would her parents forget? What if they drove away from the farm, then got a few miles away and realized she wasn't with them? But they wouldn't do that, would they? She was an only child! They wouldn't forget her. Would they?

  A chicken half-clucked, while another one rustled. She wondered if they were used to kids being locked in with them. Chickens weren't mean, were they?

  She brought her knees up and rested her head on them. It was too warm in the coop, and she was getting a little thirsty. And eventually she would need a bathroom. The pressure wasn't much right now, which was good.

  "I have to go to the bathroom," she called out.

  No one answered.

  She sighed, shifted, and kept her head resting on her knees. She tried to think of something else. But what? Maybe there was another way out? But coops wouldn't have two doors, would they?

  She was tired of this game that wasn't a game. It must be pretty boring on the farm for Hank and Robin to lock a visitor in the chicken coop. They were losers, she told herself. Big-time losers. They would probably come back and laugh to see her in tears. Except she wasn't going to cry. She didn't cry about much--not even when she was a little kid and fell down and scraped her leg from knee to ankle--and she wasn't going to let those kids or anyone else see tears.