by David Wood
“He is?”
“Yes,” Tony said.
Alan frowned. “You're lying to me,” he whispered.
Tony's eyes widened. “Why do you say that?”
Alan stomped his left foot. “Your feet, Tony. When you say things that make you uncomfortable, you tap your left foot.”
The man laughed, shaking his head. “You are too damned bright, Alan, I'll give you that.” Alan's face remained impassive. Tony's laugh disappeared. “Okay, Alan.” He brought his arms back in and rested his hands on the table's edge. “Your Dad's health has improved. He's no longer sick.”
“He's not? You promise?” Tony nodded. Alan frowned. Tony was telling him the truth. He knew that much. But Tony was definitely holding something back. “Then why can't I see him?”
“The doctor's fixed him up, Alan. His ribs, lungs, all that's okay. The last of the poison is gone too.”
Alan knew Daddy had been very sick. The Ice Cream Man had done something to him. Blood poisoning was what Tony had called it. Alan didn't know what that was, only that Daddy had almost died.
“How long have I been here?” Alan asked.
Tony shrugged. “Three weeks, I think. About that, anyway.”
“How many more before I can see Daddy?”
Sucking in a breath of air and then exhaling slowly, Tony looked down at the table. “Alan, I--” He stopped speaking and then looked up. Tony cocked his head slightly. “I haven't seen your Dad yet.” Tony swallowed. “I'm going to see him today, though. Right after this. If he's better, I'll take you--”
“You just said he's better,” Alan said.
Tony thrummed his fingers on the table. Alan watched them in fascination. Daddy had done something similar to that. “I said his body's better, Alan. But he's not talking to anyone.”
Alan blinked. “But, he'll talk to me.”
The flat expression on Tony's face turned into a soft smile. “He might, Alan. He might. But let me see him first, and then we'll know.”
“I know--” Alan wiped at his eyes. “I know Mommy's gone. She's not coming back,” Alan whispered. Tony said nothing. “But I want Daddy.”
Alan wiped away another tear. “I want to see my Daddy.”
“I know, Alan,” Tony said. He reached his hand across the table and touched Alan's. “I know. And I want that too.”
Alan nodded. Tony was sad. Tony was always sad when he came to see Alan. He wanted Alan to get better. He wanted Daddy to get better. He wanted Mommy to still be alive.
“I think I want to go back to my room,” Alan said. “I-- I feel very sleepy.”
“Okay, Alan,” Tony said. He patted the boy's hand. “Okay.” Tony stood up and placed his notebook inside a battered leather valise. “I'll see you soon, okay?”
Alan met his eyes. “Tony?”
“Yes, Alan?”
“What is he?” Tony blinked at him, looking confused. “What is the Ice Cream Man?”
Tony swallowed hard. “I--” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “We don't know, Alan. But I promise, he's never going to bother you again.”
“Or Daddy?”
Tony smiled. “Or Daddy.” Alan frowned. “What's wrong, Alan?” Alan pointed down at Tony's left foot. It was tapping.
Epilogue
He swam in darkness for days, poison streaming through his blood. Each short period of consciousness was filled with pain and confusion, the bright lights, the constant beep of a heart monitor, followed by distant screams, and the inevitable rush of cold, liquid sleep.
He was haunted by dreams of the Closet Man, the Grubby Man, the Ice Cream Man, dreams where a severed head rolled to a stop in front of him and opened its eyes. Sometimes it was Alan's head, sometimes Carolyn's, and sometimes, it was his own.
The lips always moved in those dreams, speaking words he couldn't hear. Regardless of whose head came flying at him in the hallway and what words it tried to speak, the dream always ended with the thing, the Fiend, standing over him and groaning in pain. In those dreams, Trey always smiled--Alan was still alive and safe.
The periods of consciousness finally grew longer, the dreams fading. He knew people came to see him--Dewhurst, Kinkaid, nameless doctors and nurses. They would sit next to him in a plastic chair, ask him questions he didn't understand. Through his remaining eye, they looked out of focus, somehow not real.
Trey couldn't wait for them to leave, to stop their questions, and let him doze through the day.
When Tony Downs showed up, things were different. The questions he asked echoed in Trey's mind, bouncing around until he was finally able to grasp them firmly in his mental hands.
“What did it look like?”
Trey didn't speak, didn't try to form words. His only answer was an image, the thing standing above him, its long nose dripping with blood, puffed out scaly flesh, the yellow rings of its eyes barely discernible in the sea of crimson.
“How did you make it go away?”
The knife. The cleaver buried to the hilt in the middle of its back, black ichor washing down.
“Did you hurt it?”
Only a sound, the groan, an inhuman wail of pain.
“Where are you?”
He couldn't speak, couldn't find his voice, only think the answers. “I'm safe,” he thought. “He can't get me here.”
“You're hiding,” Tony's voice bounced in his head.
“I'm safe here. Alan's safe here. Carolyn's safe here.” Carolyn. Carolyn sat on the couch with him, her arms wrapped loosely around his neck. Alan was on the floor, racing his Koopa through the Mario Kart tracks, giggling while he did it. Trey smiled.
Tony's voice faded away. Trey didn't want to listen anymore. He didn't want to hear, didn't want to see. He was safe, and nothing else mattered.
The End
If you enjoyed Closet Treats, try Tattoo by Paul E. Cooley.
A full-time author and podcaster from Houston, Texas, Paul E Cooley is a co-host on the renowned Dead Robots' Society writing podcast and enjoys interacting with readers and other writers. His best-selling novel, The Black, was released in 2014 and won the 2015 Parsec Award for best novel. Visit him online at www.shadowpublications.com
THE CRYPT OF DRACULA BY KANE GILMOUR
For too long, evil has slumbered. But now, the prince of darkness has arisen…and he thirsts.
In 1899, master stone craftsman Andreas Wagner takes a job restoring an old castle in the rural mountains of Hungary. He and his mute young wife are hoping to find a new life, after the traumatic death of their infant daughter from a strange wasting disease in Munich. The eccentric Count who owns the castle, a suave but distant man, keeps strange hours. Still, Wagner settles in to the work nicely.
But then strange things start to happen in the remote castle on the cliff. The Count’s manservant is alternately elusive or confrontational. The locals are secretive and suspicious. Wagner is nearly killed by inexplicable falling masonry. A giant bat attacks his companions. Ghostly apparitions of women with claws and fangs prowl the halls of the gloomy castle late at night. When his friend falls ill from the same disease his daughter died of, Wagner decides it’s time to leave and look for a doctor, even if it means abandoning gainful employment.
But Count Dracula and his minions have other plans. For Wagner, what began as a simple job, soon becomes a frantic battle for survival and a race against the setting sun to rescue his wife and stop the spread of an ancient evil.
Prologue
Southeast of the Borgo Pass, Hungary, 1897
Lightning crackled horizontally across the sky, throwing the ruined castle into a stark contrast with the suddenly illuminated heavens.
“Storms come on very suddenly in the mountains, I’m afraid,” the solicitor said, while struggling with the lock on the banded wooden door. The roar of the thunder, following the flash, drowned out the latter part of his apology.
“No need to trouble yourself, setting our minds at rest, sir. We are familiar with the weather, an
d I can assure you, the climate will hold little sway over my decision whether to purchase the property. We are simply grateful you could take the time to show it to us.” Thin, and over six and a half feet tall, Dragos Petran exuded all the Oxford charm he could toward the reluctant solicitor. His lovely wife, Alina, stood beside him and smiled widely, although she had privately expressed her reservations about Petran’s plans for the property. The crumbling castle on a crag some seven thousand feet above sea level was an unusual spot, and the nearest village was a few miles away by coach. Still, she had agreed to come and inspect the site with him, and Petran was pleased at her willingness.
“Ah, here we are.” The solicitor shoved the wooden door with his shoulder. It creaked inward. His grin looked sheepish at the sad state of the ruined grounds and the groaning door, but Petran was unperturbed. The solicitor slipped inside and before Petran and his wife were fully in the doorway, the portly man was returning from the interior gloom with a lighted candlestick. “Although the exterior needs some work, you’ll find the design work inside is top-notch, and the furniture and fittings are all well appointed.”
Petran helped the slender Alina to shed her overcoat, and he hung it on a dark wooden coat rack just inside the heavy door. The solicitor moved around the room and lit additional candles. Soon the room was filled with a warm yellow glow, and Petran could see the fine woodwork in the large hall, and the long-since-faded tapestries. An enormous curved marble staircase swept up to a darkened second story. Short hallways led off in every direction on the ground floor. A thick Persian rug covered most of the floor, but Petran could see the black and white checked marble at the edges of the vast foyer.
“It’s lovely,” Alina said, and Petran could tell she was sincere, as he had instructed her to be.
“The castle was owned by a local Count for many years, and I believe it was in his family for a few hundred years. He was a businessman who traveled abroad widely, but he mysteriously disappeared on one such trip. As you can see, the grounds have fallen into disrepair.”
“How long has the property been vacant?” Petran asked.
“Well, we’ve had a caretaker on the grounds a few times in the last years, of course, but the Count went missing over seven years ago now.” The man spoke calmly, as he led them through the ground floor rooms, lighting candles as he went, to dispel the dense shadows. Petran noticed that the older man showed no more hesitation or awkwardness. Now inside the building, the man had slipped into a routine he had no doubt undergone countless times. Petran knew the castle had been on the Agency’s listings of available properties for the last four years, and that this solicitor had shown the crumbling estate to several prospective buyers who had passed on the opportunity. Soon there would be no more prospective buyers—but not because Petran planned to buy the castle. He had other plans.
The man led them through the huge kitchen, one hand clutching the candlestick and the other mopping sweat off his brow with a fine linen handkerchief. Petran wondered if the solicitor could somehow sense that something was wrong with the castle, every time the man led his clients here. On the surface, the man seemed fine, but Petran suspected that deep inside the solicitor’s brain, some instinctual lobe that governed self-preservation was bursting with energy, trying to warn the sweaty little man. But after several visits to the secluded castle, he must have learned to ignore that feeling.
“Shall we move upstairs next?” The man spoke to Alina, who had showed the most interest in the immense kitchen.
Petran stepped forward. “Is there a wine cellar? I would like to see that first, I should think. Also to inspect the foundations of the structure.” Petran looked around himself as he spoke, acting disinterested. He was making the chubby man work hard for a sale that would never happen.
“Certainly, sir.” The man led them to a painted white, wooden door on the edge of the kitchen that revealed a wide stone stairwell, which curved gently downward into a broad spiral. Each step was cut from a massive slab of smooth stone, and Petran wondered whether the rock had been hewn directly from the mountain. The solicitor led the way, lighting sconces as he descended the broad steps. Alina followed him, daintily crossing each step with three strides for every one Petran needed to cross the slabs, as he followed her.
The rooms in the lower section of the castle were endless, but most were empty, standing solitary along the curving stairwell wall like dark prison cells. Petran simply popped his head in each as the rotund solicitor swept past them to the lower reaches, buried deep inside the mountain. At the bottom, the man moved into the wide room with a flourish. His candlelight jumped and leapt to the high stone arches of the chamber.
“Oh my,” Alina breathed.
Petran scanned the darker recesses of nooks and indents in the walls. Each was filled with rack after rack of dusty wine bottles. They looked French, but Petran was suspicious of the contents. Still, he would make no comment.
“The wine cellar is fully stocked, as you can see, and would, of course, be included in the price, sir.” The solicitor looked pleased with himself. The arrangement of the multitude of wine racks formed a kind of labyrinth, with twisting alleys between the rows and rows of bottles.
Petran strode past the man winding his way through the racks of bottles, acting as if he were appraising them and their potential value. He made his way toward the distant back of the chamber and muttered under his breath. “For so many Swiss Francs, I should hope so.” He was loud enough that the other man could hear him, but just barely. “And what is back here?”
Petran stopped at a locked door at the back of the cellar.
“I believe it is only a root cellar.” The solicitor was on his way back to the stairs to the kitchen. “Shall we move up?”
“We’ve come all this way, sir. I feel I would be remiss if I did not inspect every room, else I would have wasted your time.” Petran smiled in the shadows as the solicitor reluctantly returned through the arches. By the time the man’s candlelight reached him through the maze of dusty wooden racks, Petran’s face had returned to a neutral and somewhat disinterested visage. Alina joined them, but she looked disappointed. Petran could see she had no interest in a potential root cellar, and she had been eager to follow the solicitor up the spiral stairs. Petran wondered if she could feel it, too. The raw menace of the place.
He stepped aside to allow the sweaty man to unlock the wide door, with a key from his ring of metal keys. The jingling filled the dimly lit space with an outlandish and unwelcome cheerfulness. Petran gave Alina a reassuring smile.
They stepped inside the chamber, Petran ducking his head slightly under the doorframe, and the solicitor drew a sharp breath. The yellow light illuminated a small space with a stone coffin on a raised platform in its exact center, its head toward the door. The room was otherwise empty.
“It’s a tomb!” The man was clearly befuddled. Petran had suspected that the man would never have been in the room, but now he was certain.
“A crypt, sir. Let us see who is buried here.” Petran stepped forward toward the coffin.
“I don’t think we should—”
Petran drowned out his wife’s tiny voice by demanding the solicitor help him with the stone lid. The small man harrumphed, but moved forward and did as he was told. The lid was heavy, but the two men were easily able to slide it aside, and then lift it and gently place it on the floor. Alina moved up with the two men as all three peered into the depths of the coffin. The flickering light made the small pile of ashes look golden, but Petran knew they would be gray in daylight. The thought was moot. They were about to become a different color.
Petran stepped back slightly, and in one fluid movement, removed the large carving knife from his jacket. He had picked it up in the kitchen before they descended the spiral stair. One hand reached around the portly solicitor’s face from behind, and the other brought the silver blade sweeping across the man’s throat.
Blood erupted from the man’s neck, spraying the ashen con
tents of the coffin as his body went limp.
Alina screamed when she saw the solicitor’s life pool into the stone sarcophagus. She stumbled back, away from the blood and the coffin. Petran looked at her and saw in her eyes that she understood she would be next. He dropped the corpse on the coffin and stepped toward his young bride. Her eyes widened at his approach, but then they darted quickly back to the coffin, and the horror that waited there.
When her eyes widened further still, Petran knew what was happening behind him. He lunged forward as Alina turned and ran, his long legs easily closing the distance between them as she darted left and right through the twisting maze of wine racks, until he cornered her at a dead end, against a stone wall.
“You should be honored,” he whispered in her ear, as he dragged her thrashing form back to the waiting coffin.
He didn’t want to miss the sight, and he had already missed much of it. Under the solicitor’s flaccid form, a body now filled the coffin, where before there had been only ash. Although ‘body’ was a bit optimistic. Petran could see bone in places, and veins and arteries networking the form. Muscle was growing. Skin, however, was still entirely missing. Alina fainted in his clutches.
Petran wasted no time. He grabbed her by her long hair before her body reached the floor. He yanked her skull up and over the lip of the coffin’s sidewall and then brought the blade smoothly across her neck, exactly as he had done with the fat man. More blood sprayed into the container, and skin began to grow over the skeleton’s muscles before Petran’s eyes.
The process took less than half an hour.
When the man sat up and climbed out of the coffin, Petran dropped to his knees.
“Welcome back, my Lord.” Petran spoke now in Hungarian, instead of in English.
The man in front of the sarcophagus stood slightly taller than six feet, with long, shoulder-length black hair on his head, but none anywhere else on his nude form. His skin was a pasty white, and Petran could see bluish veins through the transparent flesh. He was surprised how young the man looked. No more than thirty years, if a day. The man’s eyes smoldered with a fire that spoke of years of anguish and a dire need for revenge.