Erick needed to know if she would run. If she would fight for her life. How she would handle this moment of terror. How Amber would.
She didn’t move, didn’t fight. Instead she whined. She begged, she pleaded, her voice cracking and her words drowning out in a discordant moan.
Erick pulled himself up from his hands and knees and clenched the stalk of a thick bush for support. He craned his neck and poked his head out from the top of the shrubbery so that none of the boardwalk would block his view.
Bawling in a constant stream, the girl raised her hands to meet Bradley’s wrists as his fingers slid their way around her throat.
She pried at his hands, but with no success. He leaned over her, pushing her backward toward the water. Her body now resisted, if not by a function of her brain, then by instinct. She rolled backward, her legs springing out on each side of him as he pushed her back-first into the water. Her legs squirmed and kicked. Sand flung up and some of the dust billowed away in the gusts of wind.
Burdened by gurgles of water in her throat, she yelped, begging. “Please! No!” Coughing and choking interrupted, then she repeated, “Please! No!” This was followed by the sound of a reversed gurgle, where the salt water infiltrated the inner caverns of her chest.
Erick wiped sweat from his brow. Beyond the assault scene, near the market, he spotted a drooping chain that had been stretched across the boardwalk, with a dangling sign at its center. Someone had blocked off the path with a closed-for-the-evening message to turn away potential passersby.
Turning his attention, he found two other people nearby, maybe the same distance from the attack as he. They were watching. One was the gothic girl he’d seen in the marketplace, the other was the janitor he’d seen moving the garbage. Both brimmed with fire, soaking in the moment.
Erick lost his balance and went to one knee. He turned back to the assault, steadying himself by grabbing a stalk in his left hand. His right arm contracted, then jerked, as did his right brow and the entire right side of his face. He shuddered, but kept his eyes fixed on the squirming girl. With no leverage to move anywhere but down, she was still putting up a fight. This was important. Erick wondered why she’d been so submissive before, but now that her fate was certain, she was fighting with all she had, and it did something for him.
As he wondered about this and as sweat trickled from his twitching right brow into his eye, his shaking right arm worked its way to his midsection, huddling itself. Still trembling, it nestled itself into his belly, worked its way down to his abdomen.
The girl began to settle. Her kicks and squirms now spaced apart.
Bradley turned upward, still holding the girl’s neck under the water. With elation vivid under the pale lights, he looked into Erick’s eyes. As before, Erick peered through the killer’s pupils, but this time he could see deeper. All the way. He found a view into the heart of the evil core. He saw the nakedness of his own anger. From deep behind the man’s glazed-over eyes, It stared back. It was unsatisfied, and like all evil, It needed more.
Then It grinned. It grumbled from within, squatted, then sprang out, streaking across the boardwalk toward Erick. He watched, frozen in place, as It closed in.
Your head jolts back, then settles.
You feel your hand moving over your groin, trembling less, but the sensation is noticeable on the hardening bulge in your jeans.
Your arm is calm now, your hand in control. Your forefinger and thumb find the tab and give it a gentle tug. Blip, blip, blip. The slide works its way over the teeth, one at a time. Fear melts away to anxious stimulation.
Wyoming, Montana, Idaho. These are places where one can seek refuge. You can nestle into a patch of mountains and be free of it all. The schools are good and you can live off almost no income. You’ll never need to be in a crowd again. It could be a simple life for you and Mindy and Amber. You tell yourself this in a final attempt to hold on.
Blip, blip, blip. The zipper reaches the end. Butterflies flutter about in your stomach. Your fly spreads apart and your fingers explore the naughtiness, as they did while you were locked in Dennis’s bathroom during your first snuff-film experience in eleventh grade, minutes after the movie had ended.
For a moment longer the girl’s arms hold tight, her knees remain pointed upward and the tendons in her ankles stretch taut; her feet dig deep into the sand on each side of Bradley. But then her body falls limp, and you are at the brink of climax.
You can spend more time with Mindy, and together you’ll watch Amber grow up. You can protect your little Bumblebee and raise her right. And you’ll be a normal dad. A pillar. The head of a happy family, and you will not let anyone ever get close enough to do something like this to her. Life will be good, because you will make it that way. You try to convince yourself. You want to believe. You have to believe. But these thoughts short away like bad reception on a digital receiver, and your head wrenches back in ecstasy.
Welcome, Erick Wesley Dennison. Your activation is complete.
Boyd E. Harris’s love/hate relationship with writing horror fiction has long been deep-rooted. Most recently, he has felt that it encroaches on his other hobbies. Every free moment that he spends brewing up tales to induce nightmares must be pulled away from craft brewing ales of similarly dark countenance. And perhaps the only difference between the two is that to the end consumer, while both may be equally detestable, the latter might actually harm you.
-Snow Globe
by Adam Howe
I climbed stiffly to my feet–I’d twisted my ankle when I landed, and already it was throbbing and starting to swell–and brushed myself down. Now where the hell was I? Shielding my eyes from the sun, through the shimmering heat I could see the little town, wooden buildings scattered along a half-hearted Main Street like the world’s dreariest mirage. I found a stick to use as a crutch, and began limping towards the place, the sun baking my back.
Just outside town, I stopped in a livery field, splashing my face with water from a horse trough, washing off the dirt and the sweat that had collected in the creases of my face. The water was sun-warm and tasted of tin-metal. An old mule whose ribs showed through his hide watched me drink with a look approaching disgust. I tried to ignore him.
Ditching my walking stick–for appearance’s sake–I began limping down Main Street, sheltering from the heat in the shadow of Mom and Pop stores. Passing a barbershop, I nodded to the barber, who was sweeping the dust off his porch as if the desert had been his last customer. He nodded back. Then he must’ve seen how I looked, because his eyes narrowed to slits and he scowled at me as if he regretted his manners. I caught a glance of my reflection in the barbershop window–at my filthy cotton suit–and I couldn’t say I blamed him. I’d been riding the rails since I skipped from the honor ranch, and I looked like hell.
Up ahead was a diner with a red neon BEER sign winking like a devil in the window, and I started limping a little faster towards it. I didn’t have a cent to my name, but I had sob stories aplenty–like the one about my Studebaker breaking down outside town, and having to walk ten miles. I reckoned I could sap some sucker into buying me a bottle of suds; it’s what I was good at. I could picture the ice-cold bottle, beaded with condensation like pearls; my mouth flooded with drool as I imagined taking the first sip, swilling it round to get rid of the tinny taste of horse water. In my mind, I was already ordering my second beer, when I saw the sheriff’s car rattling along the rutted road to town, trailing a funnel of dust like a comet.
I stopped in my tracks, looking between the approaching car and, longingly, at the BEER sign. Maybe someone had spotted me being tossed off the train; or maybe the law came to town every time a train passed, to roll out the welcome mat for any undesirables who hopped off. In my experience–and I learned it the hard way–small town law are about as friendly as railroad bulls, and I wasn’t in any rush to meet this one. If he collared me, there’d be no honor ranch this time. Straight to Garrick State I’d go. Guys like me don’t las
t long in a place like that.
Without thinking, I stepped inside the nearest store, the bell above the door clanging like a cowbell. The old woman behind the counter looked up from her needlepoint, her how-do smile faltering slightly when she saw me–she was a better actor than the barber, at least.
It was a general store and hardware supply. The first thing I saw was the cash register. A sign above the counter said: WE DELIVER. Sacks of grain were heaped against the walls like an old army outpost. In the middle of the store, a shelved aisle was stocked with tins and jars with their labels neatly aligned; a place like this wouldn’t do a roaring trade, I figured, and it’d be easy to get pernickety about something like making sure the labels all faced front. I looked at the register again. Force of habit.
“Help you, sir?” the old woman said, peering at me over half-moon glasses. She set her needlepoint on the counter and stood up, smoothing down the front of her apron, still smiling her storekeeper smile. No one had called me ‘sir’ anytime lately. Had a nice ring to it.
I squared my shoulders and said: “Afternoon, ma’am. Just passing through. Darn car broke down just outside town.” She clucked her tongue and gave a sympathetic shake of her head, all the encouragement I needed. “Just waiting on the feller to bring her back and take a gander.” She looked me up and down, at the sorry state of my suit; I could’ve passed for a grease monkey myself–or even just a monkey.
“Pete Nelson, would that be?”
“Ma’am?”
“Runs the car yard.” She pointed, vaguely. “Yonder way.”
I grinned like it rang a bell. “I believe that was the gentleman’s name, yesum.”
She nodded sagely. “Pete’ll get her running again,” she assured me.
“You don’t mind I browse around?”
“Please.” She gave a proud flourish of her hand.
I went to the souvenir display nearest the window–why the hell anyone would want a keepsake from this dustbowl town I didn’t know–and made out like I was browsing. From here, I could spy out the window at the lawman. I could feel the old woman watching me, so I picked up a snow globe from the shelf, one of a dozen or so on display. It was a little bigger than a softball, and surprisingly heavy on account of the music box within the wooden base. Inside the glass was an ornate recreation of the town. I’m a fair carpenter myself–plenty of time to practice in the prison woodshop–and I could appreciate good work when I saw it. I supposed if you absolutely had to have a souvenir, then this was the one to get. The attention to detail was remarkable. There was the livery, with its horse-trough and even a tiny half-starved mule standing out in the field. On Main Street, I could see the barbershop, the diner with the red BEER sign in the window, and the very store I was now standing in; it gave me a funny, and not entirely pleasant, feeling of déjà vu. I turned the snow globe over in my hand and watched the porcelain snowflakes fall, trying to place the tinkling tune the music box played. It was “Bringing in the Sheaves.” The woman was still watching me, I realised, so I said: “My kids would love this.”
The woman gave a wistful smile. “Mister Thompson made ‘em,” she said. Her husband, I figured. “Before he passed…” Her smile began to twitch, like an old scar that itched, and she quickly went back to her needlepoint before her welling eyes spilled over. I don’t like seeing women of an age cry. Reminds me too much of my mother, all the times I’d disappointed her. I looked away, out the window.
The sheriff’s car had cruised slowly around Main Street, before pulling up in front of the diner. I watched as a big bear of a deputy–worse than any sheriff in my experience, always something to prove–levered himself out. He hitched up his belt, the gun on his hip glinting in the sun, and took a long look up and down the dusty street. For a moment, he seemed to stare right at me through the window of the store, and I held my breath until finally he swaggered inside the diner.
I knew his type, all right. They grow up pulling the wings off flies till they’re old enough to break arms. I remembered a town called Gideon, and a peace officer called Freddy Walters. The beating he gave me was so bad, I think even he thought he’d killed me. I’d pissed blood for a week, wore a suit of black and blue bruises, and even now I still get headaches that make me see double. The world is full of men like Freddy Walters, and I seemed to attract them like iron shavings to a magnet.
I watched the diner, its window blacked-out by the glare of the sun. I couldn’t see the deputy. My heart hammered and my throat felt like I was wearing a tightly knotted tie. I was still holding the snow globe, clutching it in my fist like a lucky rabbit’s foot. I pictured the deputy inside the diner, glugging a beer in three long swallows before slamming down the bottle and saying to the owner: Well, I better go deal with that bum I saw. The owner saying, with a knowing wink: Now, go easy on him, Hank. The two of ‘em laughing. Fat chance. I pictured the deputy stepping out back of the diner and then doubling round Main Street with his cowboy swagger, entering the rear of the store and creeping towards me, ready to cold-cock me with the butt of his pistola–
A hand dropped on my shoulder and I reeled around, swinging my arm like I was throwing a fastball.
The snow globe hit her square in the forehead. Her head snapped back with a crack like someone breaking a branch on their knee, her half-moon glasses flying off her face. She stood there a moment, arm still outstretched, swaying slightly from side to side. And then she fell like a prizefighter, hitting the deck with a bang that rattled the goods on the shelves. The music box inside the snow globe must’ve broke when I hit her, because the first few bars of “Bringing in the Sheaves” started trilling over and over in a mangled loop; a horrible sound like a calliope from hell.
I stood over the old woman, my knuckles white on the snow globe. I’d never hurt anyone before. Sure, I might’ve left a trail of broken hearts and empty promises behind me, but nothing like this.
“Damn it, lady,” I yelled, “what the hell were you doing sneaking up on me?”
She didn’t answer, and I watched as the dent in her forehead began to fill with blood. It overflowed and slowly pooled around her head like a spilled can of paint. She gaped at me like a caught fish, her eyes in orbit and her mouth clapping open and closed. Her arm was still outstretched, as if reaching out for help, and I took a step towards her–
Then I stopped.
I pictured her in a dark room of the sheriff’s office, wearing a headdress of bandages, glaring at me through one-way glass, her arm outstretched just the same, except now she was pointing me out from a line-up of drifters: There Sheriff, he’s the one, he’s the man who tried to kill me.
I looked at the snow globe. The glass was smudged with blood where I’d brained the old woman. My shaking hand was making it blizzard. Inside, it wasn’t Thompson’s loving recreation of his little old town–it was Garrick State Penitentiary. I cried out, dropping the snow globe like a hot coal. It shattered on the floor by the woman’s twitching feet, spraying water and snowflakes and chunks of toy town. The hellish calliope music came to a sudden stop. The only sound in the store was the old woman’s wheezing breath.
I stood over her, watching and waiting and letting her die. Took about the same time as the snow globe water took to dry on the warm floorboards. I could see my reflection in the blood pooled around her head. The reflection of a murderer. But I hadn’t sprouted fangs or devil horns. In fact, I looked more like a frightened kid. Suddenly an animal roared behind me and I whirled around, raising my arms to shield myself. But it was only the sheriff’s deputy–back in his patrol car and gunning the engine before he drove out of town. Didn’t even glance my way.
I flipped the sign in the window from OPEN to CLOSED and then locked the door, pulling the shutters down over the windows. It wouldn’t buy me much time. A town this small, where everyone knows each other’s business, a locked door during OPEN hours would only arouse suspicion. But I needed time to think. Think, damn it; think! I always think better when I’m counting mone
y–it relaxes me–so I went and opened the register. Turns out, the woman’s life was worth just eleven dollars and change; I knew, if I was caught, it’d cost me a helluva lot more. I counted the bills again and again, but I didn’t feel any more relaxed. I shoved the money in my pocket and then wiped my sweaty hands on my pants like they were wet with the old woman’s blood.
I went in the parlor behind the store and peeked out the window. A delivery van was parked in the yard, Thompson’s stenciled in faded white paint on the door. I’d ditch the van outside town, then ride the rails or my thumb until I was far away. I went back in the store and searched the counter for keys to the van. I couldn’t find them. I guess I knew all along where they were, I just didn’t want to touch her again–didn’t want to go anywhere near her.
Trying not to look at her glazed eyes or the bloody crater in her forehead, I crouched down beside the old woman. Blood had begun to seep through the floorboards and I could hear it goop into the crawlspace–heavy, like it was starting to congeal. Gingerly, I patted down the front of her apron till I heard the jangle of keys. I pulled them out, then flipped the bib of her apron up over her face so I wouldn’t have to look at her again.
Then I waited till sundown for what seemed like forever, hidden out of sight in the parlor, praying no one came knocking while the woman grew cold on the floor. At full dark, I crept out back. The night sky was thick with cloud, the moon behind it like a cataract-covered eye. It was cold–colder than it should’ve been for June. As I limped across the yard to the van, I wrapped my jacket around me, shivering, surprised to see my breath was frosting.
Main Street was empty as I drove out of town. I kept the headlights off, only switching them on and putting my foot down when I’d passed the livery. The van jounced along the rutted road that rose towards the railway track. The fear in my gut began to unclench slowly the farther out of town I got. I gave it more gas. I needed to get past the railway track–then I could think about starting over, if I could. I looked between the yellow spears of the headlights on the road, and the rising needle of the speedometer. A few fat drops of rain dotted the windshield, and I reached to turn on the wipers–
Horror Library, Volume 5 Page 17