Wicked Haunted: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers

by Daniel G. Keohane

  He moved into the Garden and straight to the tank on the far side of the room, then gasped.

  The fine greyish mold ringed the bottom of the tank, pockmarked by a few half-formed buttons; but the middle of the tank was an expanse of stained, moist glass in the rough size and shape of the bizarre body that no longer occupied it.

  Mark’s wide eyes wandered to the top of the tank, and he frowned when he saw the lid appeared to be very much in place. Around the tank, he saw only a pair of discarded latex gloves and a filthy knife; but otherwise, the table and the floor were bare and clean.

  “Chad!” he hollered and, looking around, he saw the basement door was ajar.

  Mark descended the stairs, ready to yell at him, to ask him what the hell he’d been thinking, to demand where he’d moved the body. All of those thoughts vanished, however, when the burnt smell was replaced with a thicker, more coppery, one.

  And then he saw the red puddle spreading across the floor: blood. So much blood, everywhere.

  In the middle of it was something small, dark, and rectangular. Chad’s journal.

  Mark’s jaw worked uselessly, trying and failing to form words that he already knew nobody else would be able to hear.

  He was so transfixed by the reddened floor that he somehow didn’t notice the figure slumped on the chair until now. His eyes took it in and widened when they found Chad’s—as much as was left of them in the ruined red mess spread upon the chair—and then he finally found his voice.

  * * *

  Mark stood in the front doorway and stared at his twin reflections in the huge, round, black lenses of Constance’s sunglasses. As with the first time he’d met her, they’d stayed on, even now that the sun had long ago set. She was dressed in a neat, grey business outfit, her skirt and jacket clean and well-kept, jewelry glittering at the base of her neck and her wrists.

  After reaching her over a private messaging network, Mark had received a call from Constance’s private number. Her surprise had quickly shifted from pleased to curious as he’d demanded that she come see him at once.

  He’d spent the long wait for her arrival debating exactly what he was going to tell her. More than once, he’d suspected her of somehow being behind what had happened; yet he knew that this was unlikely. There were a million other ways she could have stolen the body without having to harm a hair on Chad’s or his heads.

  After an hour that had felt like eternity, Constance arrived. As soon as she came close to the door, Mark told her that Chad was dead, and that the body she’d sent them was missing.

  He waited for her to scowl, to yell, to coolly threaten him. Instead, she cocked her head, eyebrows disappearing behind her black shades. “Please show me.”

  Mark turned and led her inside, listening to the clicks and snaps of her high heels on the tiles and floorboards behind him. He took her through the Garden, not stopping to show her the empty tank—not yet—and brought her straight downstairs to what was left of his friend.

  “Oh, my,” Constance said, and Mark was surprised to watch her walk toward the couch, stopping and crouching down directly before the uneven ring of red gobs and puddles.

  Mark couldn’t look at the chair again; he turned away, cringing as he noticed the puddle of puke he’d left upon discovering the massacre.

  “This is quite bad,” Constance continued, and when Mark looked, he saw her hand moving beside her face, fingers lifting away from her shades. She stood slowly, one heel tapping on the concrete as she straightened and turned to look back at Mark. “You don’t have any clue as to what happened?”

  “None.”

  “Any kind of indoor security cameras?”

  Mark shook his head, looking away, glassy-eyed.

  He could hear Constance murmuring something about tunnels, and turned to find her glancing around at the basement floor. After a moment, she slowly looked back to the pulpy, red flower spread out on the chair.

  Mark felt a chill in the back of his neck even before Constance turned back to him, and he started shaking his head.

  Constance continued to stare at the bloody chair. “Perhaps—”

  “No,” Mark growled.

  “—he could show us,” she said, her thin lips curling into a smile.

  * * *

  Constance continued to speak to Mark as if he’d chimed in, as if he’d shown any sign of interest; but all he could do was stare at the nearest area of unbloodied floor and listen. When Constance was done talking, Mark silently began walking for the stairs, and she followed.

  Up in the Garden, he showed her the empty tank. She muttered something that sounded like fascinating, and Mark turned to find her staring at it. “It… It came from a former monastery in Barbados,” she said. “Locals said it—”

  “No more,” Mark said quietly. When Constance turned to him, he shook his head slowly. “No more. We’re done.”

  He waited for an inevitable retort, some kind of menacingly aloof promise that he couldn’t back out of their deal; but much to his surprise, she simply said, “I understand.”

  Mark looked into her unreadable lenses for a long moment before turning away.

  “I…do know certain folks who are very good at cleaning things up,” she said. “In more ways than one.”

  Mark said nothing.

  Constance sighed heavily, then said, “I’m very sorry about your friend.”

  Mark’s lips tightened.

  After a long moment, Constance turned and made her way back into the office.

  When Mark heard the car start up, he forced himself back into the basement.

  He spent the rest of the night throwing six years of raised beers, bad movies, girlfriend stories, and a steady business partnership into several black garbage bags, which he then buried in the woods behind the house.

  * * *

  Over the next several days, Chad’s phone buzzed and chimed with increasing frequency. At first, Mark ignored it; but as more and more texts, calls, e-mails, and other messages came through, he finally replied to them, stating (as Chad) that the number and address had changed, and that he’d let them know the new information soon. He didn’t know how long he’d be able to keep this up, however; he expected a visit from the authorities before long.

  Mark also began cleaning off Chad’s notebook as best he could, but soon resigned himself to the fact that it was forever stained with red smears and splatters. It didn’t contain much that he hadn’t already seen—mainly notes on different bodies and the locations haunted by their spirits, the growth and quality of their mushrooms, and descriptions of the ghost-trips.

  But then there had been Chad’s last entry.

  “Darkness, a huge, black sky,” he’d written. “No stars, but there’s a moon, far too big/too close. So much dead land around me, grey rock stretching to every horizon. No wind, yet there’s a weird, echoing sort of hollowness.

  “Something is standing there in the middle of it all, staring up at the moon. It’s got a head like a skull, bony and angular—and it’s looking at me, staring at me with those empty, dark sockets.

  “Its jaw parts in a scream that nobody can hear, because there’s nobody, nothing else, absolutely nobody.

  “No—I’m screaming, screaming and screaming again and again, but nobody can hear me.

  “It’s the great silence, the ultim—”

  On more than one occasion, Mark found himself wishing that he’d not cut Constance off as she’d begun to describe to him where the coffin and its damned contents had come from.

  He also frequently thought back on what she’d suggested.

  And then, one early October night, after waking from a vivid terror of his friend standing beside his bed, screaming, Mark headed back into the woods with a shovel.

  * * *

  Mark set his jaw as he stared down at the cooling, amber slices of mushroom. “Sorry, buddy,” he said, not for the first time.

  He and Chad had often made sick jokes about this, but most of them revolved a
round the image of them as a couple of crotchety old men. They’d never really considered this, even as a remote possibility.

  With the same, numb, automatic mind that had guided him on the night he’d cleaned up Chad’s eviscerated body—the same one that had controlled his hands while digging the grave, and again when he was digging it back up, and when he placed the decomposing remains into one of the tanks—Mark scooped up the slices in his hand and shoved them into his mouth. He didn’t bother to grab a slice of bread, nothing in the world could cover the flavor of what he was eating.

  Mark sat down at the kitchen table and crossed his arms, ignoring the disgust that threatened to gag him. He waited for the black spots to open into the final sights of his dead friend. He coughed once, twice, opened his eyes—

  —Chad was in the basement.

  He shook his head. “Holy shit.” Now that had been a crazy trip.

  He looked back over his notes, making sure he’d jotted down everything—

  That strange thumping sound again.

  He began to rise from the chair, but his head spun and his stomach lurched. Dropping back down, he let out a shaky breath.

  The thump came again, and with it, a high, keening cry.

  Chad looked around, frowning; the sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, all at once; above, below, inside, out—what the hell was it? He pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyes, rubbing out some of the lingering headache from the trip, and when he opened them, he saw the body from upstairs hovering directly before him.

  It was still covered in mold and mushrooms, but its many arms and legs had spread, were twisting and swaying, because something was holding it.

  Chad looked up and gasped, and then he understood, understood everything, as he saw its full shape, all its many arms—fully-formed, as they should be, not the short, stubby hybrid appendages of the poor, failed offspring that had somehow been cruelly wrested from a despairing mother and into the horror of light that was this world.

  He looked down at his notebook as the mother’s arms reached for him—

  —and Mark began to scream.

  we’re all haunted here

  doungai gam

  I don’t remember much about those first few hours after I died.

  What I do recall was that first moment of awareness when I saw myself lying face down on my bed. I walked over and reached out to touch my physical self. My hand passed through my right shoulder and as it did I felt a tingling sensation throughout my new self. That was when I knew.

  It took a little longer for the others to realize I was gone. My mom was the one who found me the next day. She came into my room under the assumption that I was asleep after a late night of playing online games with friends from school. It didn’t seem to strike her as odd that I was sprawled across my bed, one leg dangling off the side. Any touch of the hangover she might have had from the night before dissipated when she went to shake me awake and the truth wrapped around her with its cold grip.

  The strength of her grief could have moved mountains.

  My dad came running when he heard my mom. It was bad enough to see Mom breaking down, but to watch my dad, too… I had to leave the room.

  I walked the hallway of the only home I had ever known. My mom’s cries followed me down the stairs into the living room. Even when I went outside I heard her wailing as if she were next to me. It wasn’t long before sirens came screaming down the road and emergency vehicles parked in the driveway. I stayed out on the front porch. I know that probably sounds weird but it seemed like the right thing to do.

  Within the hour my sister strolled around the corner of Field and Hoadley. She had spent the night at her friend Julie’s house. She stopped when she saw the ambulance, then gripped her backpack and ran for the house, her face a mess of emotions.

  “Gwen.” I reached out to touch her as she ran by me. I missed her entirely but got a half-hearted swipe at her backpack.

  I stood at the doorway and listened.

  “What’s going on?” my sister said.

  My mom was sobbing, clutching my dad as if he too would disappear without notice. Two police officers stood guard at the bottom of the stairs. Their faces lacked emotion but I could see the discomfort in the younger officer’s eyes.

  Dad patted my mom’s arm and she let go of him unwillingly. He stumbled forward, still trying to remain the stoic.

  “Your brother…he’s gone.”

  The howl that emerged from my sister crushed me. Her backpack dropped to the floor as she leaned on the nearby recliner. My dad went to her and put his hand on her shoulder, an awkward gesture of support. She hugged him, sobbing and mumbling something into his chest.

  “What did you say?”

  She pulled away and looked up at him. Mascara and eyeliner stained her cheeks and my dad’s t-shirt.

  “What happened?” She spoke so quietly I could barely hear her.

  He pulled her towards the couch so they could talk. In that moment, my mom let out another wail as she tried to get past the cops standing guard.

  “I want to see my son! Let me see him!”

  “Ma’am, you’re not allowed upstairs.” The older cop was gentle but firm with both his words and his grip on my mom.

  Gwen pushed my dad towards my mom before sitting down. She stared off into space, her jaw slack. Tears, mascara, and snot ran down her face. She didn’t seem to notice or care.

  Dad brought my mom to the couch and urged her to sit with Gwen. Mom rocked back and forth, unable to stop crying. My sister took her hand and held tight, still with that shell-shocked look on her own face.

  Before too long, a detective showed up. He talked briefly with my folks before going up to my room to investigate. Gwen managed to pull herself together enough to ask the officers if they wanted anything to drink. They both declined. Behind her, I heard my parents giving each other a rare declaration of love.

  It hurt so much to stay here and watch, but I was unable to leave. I was tethered to this house, to these beings I had fought, lived, laughed and cried with. I turned away from the scene inside and looked around the immediate neighborhood. Not everyone was home. I saw old Mrs. Wilkins across the street staring at our house through her bay window. She was the neighborhood grump, the one who kept the baseballs that were accidentally hit into her yard. She also had the meanest ankle-biting dogs I ever met.

  I glared back at her, knowing she couldn’t see me. After a moment, her face went pale and she ran away from her window, leaving the curtains wide open.

  Did she see me?

  Rattled, I stepped further into the yard and looked around. A few houses down, the Zimmerman twins were sitting on their front porch smoking with their friends. Cars carrying faces both familiar and strange drove by, all of them victims of tunnel vision. A girl wearing headphones walked by, dragged along by her German shepherd. She didn’t give the emergency vehicles a second glance.

  Around us, life continued on.

  Inside, the detective questioned my family. Did I have any health issues? Were they aware of the bong in my closet? Did they know about the nippers hidden at the bottom of my trash can? How well did they know my friends? The inquisition seemed to be never ending.

  The detective thanked my family for their cooperation and was gone shortly thereafter. The officers asked my dad to bring Mom into another room as they were going to be taking my body away. She hadn’t been doing much more than crying and repeating to herself the events of the day. When she overheard this she stood up, insisting she see her son one last time. It took my dad, sister, and one of the officers to hold her back and keep her in the kitchen. When they wheeled me by, I turned away.

  After the police left, Gwen came outside to make the phone calls that no one ever wanted to make. I watched her while she spoke with several different cousins and texted someone—probably her friend, Julie. My suspicions were proven right: Julie’s beat up Civic came roaring around the corner as Gwen finished her call wi
th our cousin Linda. My sister had been showing an impressive amount of poise and restraint while on the phone, but she started bawling before Julie got out of the car.

  She ran over and reached for my sister, but it was too late and Gwen collapsed on the sidewalk. Julie sat beside her and they embraced. After a couple of minutes Gwen pulled away and rested her head on her friend’s lap. Julie stroked her hair and whispered words I couldn’t hear. In time, my sister’s loud sobs reduced to tiny whimpers. By the time they stood up to go in the house, dusk had shrouded the neighborhood. In happier times they were a pair to behold—Julie the tiny spitfire alongside my tall awkward sister, full of laughter and many inside jokes that went back to their kindergarten days. How I badly wanted to grab them for a group hug as they walked by me.

  I followed them into the house. My parents sat inches apart from each other on the couch; the only contact between them was Dad’s hand covering my mom’s. Mom didn’t appear to be with it; her hazel eyes lacked any sign of clarity. She greeted Julie as if she were a stranger. My dad wasn’t much better.

  The four of them sat without speaking for a long time. Their silence, punctuated by the occasional outburst of sorrow, wove a detailed tapestry of love and hurt that hung heavy over the room and our souls. Perhaps it was because I was no longer connected with my physical being, but the weight became too much to bear and I had to leave.

  I went up to my room. Even in darkness I could see everything as if the overhead light was on. My cell phone rested on the desk next to my laptop—no doubt both had been broken into with the expectation of finding… I’m not sure what they would have been looking for. I didn’t use email for much, and my social media posts were limited to rants about video games or comic book movies. My cell was used primarily for texting stupid memes to my buddies.