After Darkness Falls 2 - 10 Tales of Terror - Volume Two

by Matt Drabble

  Vickery disappeared from view and Mac quickened his pace and ducked through the trees to get ahead of the man. He would have liked the time to question the man to find out what the hell was going on but he didn’t have the time. Big Jimmy was pissed and Vickery had to go down; whether Mac had made a mistake last night or was about to make another, it mattered little.

  He closed his eyes and opened his ears, catching Vickery’s footsteps crunching through the fallen leaves. Mac synched himself with the man’s movements and waited behind a thick oak tree trunk. As Vickery walked past, Mac slipped the blade into his hand and stepped out behind him. He slipped an arm around the throat of Vickery, pulling his head back and exposing his neck. The knife slipped through his flesh like it was made of warm butter, severing his artery and silencing him in an instant.

  Mac caught the body as it sank. With blood in danger of spraying, he pushed Vickery’s head forwards, temporarily closing the wound and choking the flow whilst dragging him into the woods out of sight.

  He looked up to check that he hadn’t been seen by any potential witnesses. Once satisfied that he was unobserved, he bent down to Vickery. Up close, it was clearly the man that he had been paid to kill. It may have been impossible after the shooting the previous night but it was him all the same. He checked the man’s pulse and felt it weakly limp on before fading completely. He held Vickery’s wrist for a few seconds more to make doubly sure before releasing it.

  On a whim, he pulled open the man’s shirt. There, in the centre of the man’s chest, was a small dimpled mark over his heart where Mac had shot him the night before. He brushed the man’s hair back and found two more similar marks on his head. Three small dimples in the same places that he had shot him seemed like far too much of a coincidence for a man who didn’t believe in them in the first place.

  He stood and let out a deep sigh, confused but now sure that Thomas Vickery was dead. He left the wooded area and carefully emerged, having checked both ways first. He kept his collar up and his head low as he headed back out through the park, taking the long way round.

  It took twice as long for him to reach his car as it had taken him to follow Vickery in the first place due to his careful step retracing. There were no eyes on him as he climbed back into his car and reached for the phone in the glove box. He punched Big Jimmy’s number into the throwaway phone and waited for him to pick up. The line was ringing for a while before it was answered.

  “Yeah?” came Big Jimmy’s gruff voice.

  “It’s me,” Mac said quietly.

  “Well?”

  Mac was about to say that it was done when he suddenly noticed a man walking up the street. The man’s movements and build were instantly recognizable. It was Vickery.

  “Well?” Big Jimmy demanded again on the phone.

  “I’m just about to take care of it,” Mac managed to get out as his mouth ran dry.

  “Then don’t waste time talking to me,” Big Jimmy snapped as he hung up.

  Mac stared in disbelief as Thomas Vickery wandered up the street, albeit a little shakily. This time, he had checked the man’s pulse himself and watched over him as he’d died; there had been no mistake.

  A sudden flash of uncharacteristic rage overtook him, drowning his rational senses which were usually impeccable. He keyed the engine and slammed the car into gear. The car leapt forward as he floored the accelerator, driving hard and fast towards Vickery. At the last minute, he swung the steering wheel hard and mounted the pavement. He just had time to see Vickery’s shocked expression before the man’s face was splattered across the windscreen and he disappeared over the roof. Mac slammed on the brakes and skidded to a screeching halt. He looked out of the rear view mirror and saw Vickery starting to crawl. He forced the car into reverse and the gears groaned in protest at his less than tender touch. He stamped on the accelerator again and the car’s suspension creaked violently as he backed over the body.

  He lost track of how many times he drove forward and reversed backwards over Vickery but by the end the man was a red sticky stain on the concrete. At some point Mac started to panic as he realised that surely there would be witnesses lining up due to the excessive noise.

  He sped off, not caring about the noise now as the damage was already done. The windscreen was a spider’s web of cracks and the car lurched worryingly to one side as he drove. He headed downtown, using as many back streets as he could manage to stay out of sight. There was a body shop that specialized in the sort of “no questions asked” service that he required and mercifully he reached them without getting pulled over.

  After he’d dropped the car off he walked shakily away to catch a taxi. As he rode in the back of the black cab, he couldn’t believe that he’d lost it so badly and so publicly. He left instructions with the garage to give the car a full makeover, meaning to strip it of all identifying marks, repaint, repair and repaper it with new documents. Mac was now more concerned with the damage to his reputation than his car as his reputation was all he had. People hired him based upon it and nobody fucked with him based upon the same thing.

  A nagging thought that wouldn’t let go led him to instruct the taxi driver to drive past Vickery’s house. As they turned onto the street, Mac craned his head to look out of the window at the gathered flashing emergency services but there were none to be seen. Instead, Vickery’s house was clearly occupied given that there was a light on in the lounge window.

  Mac ordered the driver to pull over and the man complied. He watched as an unmistakable figure walked past the lounge window, illuminated by the glow of the light.

  His mind started to rebel at the ridiculousness of the situation. He had killed a man three times now only to find that it hadn’t taken. He took the blade out from inside of his jacket and stared down at the dried blood just to make sure that he hadn’t dreamed slitting Vickery’s throat.

  “We gonna sit here all day, pal?” the driver asked impatiently.

  Mac leaned forward and with his left hand pulled the taxi driver’s head back onto the seat. With the other hand, he drove the blade through the gap between the seat and the headrest. The knife slid into the back of the driver’s neck and he only shuddered slightly before going limp.

  Mac stared long and hard at the cab driver making sure that the world hadn’t been turned on its head and that when you killed a man he stayed dead. Once satisfied, he exited the taxi and strode purposefully across the street to Vickery’s house. He rang the doorbell and waited patiently as footsteps approached the door.

  “Yes?” Vickery said as he opened the door.

  Mac answered by swiftly drawing the .44 from his shoulder holster and blowing a hole through his host’s face. The gunshot seemed monstrously loud but Mac was past caring. He stepped over the body and pulled it into the house, closing the door neatly behind him. He dragged Vickery along the hallway and into the kitchen leaving the man to make a stain on the linoleum floor.

  The kitchen was large and well appointed. Mac crossed the room to switch the kettle on, figuring that things were always clearer with a cup tea, when Vickery sat up.

  Mac snatched up a large frying pan sitting on the side. He crossed back to the groggy Vickery and smashed him hard on the back of the head. There was a loud and satisfying clang before Vickery slumped to the floor again. He quickly grabbed a hanging towel, wetted it at the sink and wiped the blood from Vickery’s face. He could see that where the gunshot had only minutes before blown his features apart, it was now barely visible. Only a small dimple in the centre of the man’s forehead remained.

  He stood over the slumped form for a few moments before his rational brain gave up trying to process the raw data before it. He found a drawer full of thin towels and fastened them together into a makeshift rope of sorts. He lifted Vickery, just as the man was starting to come around again, into a chair and secured him to it with the towels. Once he had made sure that Vickery’s arms were securely tied, he found some garden twine in another drawer and used it to
tie the man’s feet to the legs of the chair. Only then did he relax. He pulled up another chair opposite Vickery and waited.

  Eventually the man woke up again and Mac could see that the large lump where he had hit him with the frying pan had already gone down.

  “One question for you, my friend. How?” Mac asked in a reasonable tone.

  Vickery looked at him with terror splashed across his face. “I don’t know what you want but I don’t have any money,” he stammered.

  “I don’t want your money, my friend. I just want what you have. You can’t imagine just how useful it would be in my world,” Mac said, withdrawing his blade.

  “Please let me go,” Vickery sobbed.

  “You know, I’m wondering - just because you keep coming back. Does that mean that you can’t feel the pain?” The look of horror in Vickery’s eyes as the light glinted on the silver blade told him all he needed to know.

  The next hour or so was a scientific experiment as Mac used every method that he knew and every household implement that he could find to test Vickery’s limits. He used knives to slice and rags to choke, bags to suffocate and a steak mallet to bludgeon. Eventually, with his mind exhausted of his limited array of options, he retired to the lounge to process his thoughts. Vickery always came back but sometimes slower than others, sometimes with a small mark to show the wound, and at others flawlessly restored.

  Mac stared out of the lounge window, surprised to see that night had fallen. He suddenly remembered the black cab and its occupant but he could still see the vehicle sitting undisturbed at the pavement. He was now a little shocked at his loss of control but told himself that it was understandable given the circumstances.

  Vickery had wept and wailed but as yet had offered no answers. Mac hadn’t been lying when he’d told him that he wanted the secret. With Big Jimmy possibly making a move, a free pass to cheat death would be just the ticket. The only trouble was, how did you motivate a man who couldn’t die? He was running out of time as the cab driver sat outside in his tomb would surely be noticed sometime soon.

  His prayers were answered as the back door suddenly opened and a woman’s head popped around the corner. “Tommy?” she cooed before her face fell at the sight of Vickery sitting bloody and beaten, tied to a chair.

  Mac crossed the room quickly as the woman stood rooted to the spot in shock, unable to move or speak for a brief second. It was all he needed. He struck her full and hard in the face and she collapsed to the floor in a heap. Vickery’s sharp intake of breath told Mac everything that he needed to know: the man could take a torturing but here was his weak spot.

  “Please don’t hurt her,” Vickery begged as Mac stood over her slumped form, holding the vicious blade and twirling it between his fingers.

  “That all depends upon you, Mr. Vickery,” Mac said smiling cruelly.

  “I’ll tell you,” he sighed heavily, finally admitting defeat. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, you evil bastard.”

  About 30 minutes or so later, Mac was staring at the small jade statue. “You’re really telling me that this works?” he asked the broken man tied to the kitchen chair.

  “Yes,” Vickery gasped.

  “Well, if that don’t beat all,” Mac mused, not quite daring to hold the small statue for too long at a time. It was an oddly shaped thing and he couldn’t quite see what it was supposed to be. There was a sense of a face and of a body that may have been some sort of animal at one time, but now there were many pieces missing and smooth flat sections where bits were missing.

  He hadn’t bothered to tie the new woman up as she had started to wake once and he’d slugged her again to keep her under. He didn’t know who she was to Vickery and he didn’t care; she was leverage, pure and simple. “Tell me what I do again?”

  “It’s simple; you break a sliver off the statue and swallow it. Once it’s a part of you, you’re a part of it,” Vickery replied.

  Mac knew that the man might well be lying but he also knew that Vickery possessed a gift from the Gods and it was one that he wanted. He looked over at the slumped woman and could clearly see that the nose he had broken had not healed. Whoever she was, she was not as durable as Vickery and when she bled she stayed injured.

  He withdrew the .44 and pointed it at the woman. Vickery’s face pained at the sight and Mac felt a strong sense of control. “Whatever happens when I swallow a piece of this little fellow, Mr. Vickery, I can assure you I will still have time to pull this trigger.”

  “Please don’t hurt her,” Vickery moaned. “I promise you I’m not lying.”

  “And what happens to you after I swallow a piece?”

  “Every death, every wound that I’ve ever suffered comes back slowly over the next few hours and takes me to the grave. The statue can only ever have one owner at a time and that will be you.”

  Mac took the razor sharp blade out of his jacket again and picked up the statue. The surface was surprisingly soft and the blade dug in easily. He carved out a small chunk and set the statue down again on the kitchen counter. He put the knife away and toyed with the small piece of jade between his finger and thumb, rolling the green chunk back and forth.

  “I want you to look me in the eyes, Mr. Vickery,” he commanded, turning back to the bound man. “I want you to think deeply and swear that you’re telling me the truth. Let’s just say that lives depend upon it,” he said, picking up the gun again and pointing it at the woman.

  “Please, I swear, I will swear on anything that you want me to. Fetch a bible, fetch whatever you want. I swear that I’m telling you the truth,” Vickery implored.

  Mac pulled back the hammer and the loaded chamber rolled into place.

  “I SWEAR AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I SWEAR!” Vickery screamed.

  Mac considered this for a moment. “In my line of work, Mr. Vickery, I have the unfortunate duty of dealing with liars on a daily basis, but I have to say that you have convinced me,” he said seriously before pulling the trigger.

  The gun roared as he spent the life of his no longer necessary leverage. The bullet smashed through the woman’s face and exploded out of the back, showering the clean white tiles in blood and brains. Vickery screamed and rocked back and forth on the chair until it toppled over and he fell to the floor. The rage left his body almost as soon as it had arrived and now he lay sobbing, staring into the face of the woman.

  Mac raised the jade morsel to his lips and swallowed the piece whole. It went down smoothly and he sat back thinking of both Jimmy Big and Little Jimmy and how he might just take over their action instead of getting out of town afterwards. He had little doubt that Big Jimmy would consider him a threat to his son’s liberty but even if he was wrong about the man, this new opportunity was entirely too good to pass up.

  He leaned back in the chair and yawned loudly, suddenly feeling tired; after all, it had been a long day. He yawned again, only louder, and felt his eyes start to worryingly droop. He fought to keep them open and blinked furiously, but the lids were so heavy and his head fell forwards. He tried to stand but his legs gave way beneath him and he slid to the floor with his back to a cabinet. Out of the corner of his closing eye, he saw movement as Vickery’s chair had broken when he’d toppled over and the man was now freeing himself. He tried to grab the small .22 in his ankle holster but his hands wouldn’t function properly and the blackness of unconsciousness overtook him before he even got close.

  The next time that Mac opened his eyes, he could hear what sounded like intermittent rain falling. There was silence, followed by a shower of noise. His eyes cleared slowly and his head throbbed like he had been on the mother of all benders. He reached up and rubbed his aching temples without any trouble but when he tried to move his feet, he found them stuck fast. There was darkness all around him but it was suddenly blasted apart by a powerful beam of light from above.

  When he looked down at his feet, he almost screamed because his legs were only visible from the ankles up but when he looked closer he could
see that his feet were hidden beneath a slab of fresh concrete. He looked around and saw that he had been planted in a deep hole in the ground and fixed to the floor with his feet buried in the concrete. He raised a hand to his eyes to shield them against the glare of light shining down from above.

  “You’re awake I see,” the voice called from above.

  It sounded a little like Vickery but the man was having difficulty speaking as though his mouth no longer worked properly. His voice was thick and rough as though filled with gravel and dirt.

  “What are you doing, Vickery?” Mac demanded as he surreptitiously checked his pockets for weapons but found none.

  “What does it look like?”

  “It looks like you’re burying me alive,” Mac shrugged, stating the obvious.

  “Clever boy,” Vickery said as he commenced shoveling dirt downwards.

  “You lied to me!” Mac snapped ducking the brown earth shower.

  “Not at all. I told you the truth about the statue, I just left a bit out about the incubation period. I remember that I slept for almost 24 hours straight. You must have a very strong constitution. But the rest of the tale is true, I assure you,” Vickery slurred as he turned the flashlight onto his own face.

  Mac had to swallow a mouthful of disgust at the sight of the man. His face was crumbling before his eyes as though it had aged a thousand days in the last few hours. His skin was flaky and crumbling. One eye socket was a black empty hole and the other eye sagged on the man’s cheek, oozing a sickly yellow liquid.

  “Why don’t you just take the statue back?” Mac asked.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore without her. I’ve lived a long time and I am ready to die. Perhaps she is waiting for me.”

  “Please,” Mac begged, starting to really panic as for the first time in his life he couldn’t see a way out.