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

by Matt Drabble

  “Shall we say before 9am?”

  “Shall we say piss off and leave me alone?” Ruby said, hanging up just after.

  Her hands shook with anger and she fought hard to hold onto her temper. Someone had once told her that you couldn’t get rid of your temper by losing it and whilst the statement was corny it was also true.

  She slipped outside and took a pack of cigarettes from the potting shed near the bottom of the garden. Gordon wasn’t much in the way of gardening so she hid them there for special occasions. She had promised to quit in order to escape his nagging but in truth she had only changed the venue. He knew that she smoked down here but he didn’t have the balls to say anything and, as far as she was concerned, that was a wise decision.

  The first drag made her cough but the second calmed her a little. She thought back to what the woman had said and now the book made a little more sense. Gordon was the one with a passion for bird watching and ecological pursuits. He must have taken the book out and, in typical fashion, forgotten all about it. She made a mental note to have words with him when he got home later that night. For a man obsessed with figures and accuracy, he could be annoyingly absent-minded.

  She flicked the cigarette onto the floor and crushed it under her shoe, wondering why she still smoked in the first place, however rarely.

  She was halfway back up the path to the house when the heavens opened. The rain had been incessant for weeks now and the river at the bottom of their beautiful garden had already started to make inroads and now lapped at the base of the summer house.

  The wind buffeted her as she ran for cover and just as she made it back inside the lights flickered worryingly. They had suffered a couple of power cuts to date and whilst they were well stocked with candles and torches, she wasn’t fond of the dark - especially given the creaky and creepy nature of the old building.

  She went back to preparing an authentic Spanish risotto for dinner but had barely made a dent in the recipe when the phone rang again. She let it ring a few times as the volume was set down low on the handset so as not to disturb Molly in the evenings. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that it was the librarian again. More likely, it was Gordon to say that he was running late again or, heaven forbid, that the railway lines were down due to the weather. But as she picked up the phone, she knew who it was. “What do you want now, Mrs. Kingsmore?” she asked a little nervously as a sense of disquiet invaded her thoughts.

  “Any luck, Mrs. Ackley?”

  “It’s my husband. He took out the book and he’s not home for a while yet.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. The old bat from the library was surely nothing to worry about but now she was uneasy that she had just told her that she was all alone.

  “I see,” Mrs. Kingsmore replied, still the very model of politeness. “And what time do you expect him home?”

  “Oh, any minute now,” Ruby lied. “What’s that?” she called off into the empty kitchen, pretending that someone was talking to her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kingsmore. I’ve got a bit of a houseful of people at the minute. Look, I’ll get Gordon to find the book and I’ll drop it off in the morning, okay? Goodnight then.” She hung up the phone, not waiting for an answer.

  She looked around the room and felt ridiculous now. She couldn’t believe that the old woman had spooked her into pretending that there were other people here but in spite of her reservations she was still quietly glad that she had.

  She checked the large clock on the wall and saw that it was still only 6:27pm and that Gordon was never home much before 8pm. For the first time in a long time, she hoped that he would hurry home.

  She had just finished the risotto and slipped it into the range to cook when the phone rang again. She pressed the green button and just listened without speaking.

  “I have your address here, Mrs. Ackley. Perhaps I could just pop by and pick the book up in person, save you the trip?” Mrs. Kingsmore enquired.

  Ruby looked out of the window at the howling storm and wondered just what sort of a nutcase would venture all the way out into the middle of nowhere on such a night for a book. She didn’t dare speak as now the woman was really starting to freak her out.

  “I’m really not far away from you, Mrs. Ackley. In fact, I’m very close,” the librarian said ominously.

  “What do you want from me?” Ruby whispered.

  “I want my book, Mrs. Ackley; no more, no less.”

  The woman started laughing and Ruby hung the phone up. With a sudden flash of inspiration, she unplugged it from the mains. With the phone disconnected she breathed a little easier; that was, until the power went off.

  A hand flew to her mouth just in time to stop herself from screaming and she chastised herself for being so foolish. She determined that first thing in the morning she would be on the phone, or better yet in person, to demand that Mrs. “High and Mighty” Kingsmore be fired for harassing her.

  She grabbed a torch from under the sink and crept upstairs to check on Molly. She was relieved to find the baby still sleeping and closed the door gently.

  She was only halfway back down the stairs again when the phone rang. The noise halted her dead in her tracks and she stared incredulously at the small black handset as she took it from her pocket. The screen was lit with an eerie green glow despite her unplugging it already.

  Her paralysis broke and she ran for the main machine and checked that she hadn’t made a mistake. Lo and behold, the white cord was hanging loose and unplugged from its socket and yet the phone still rang.

  Her hand rose shakily to her ear with a mind of its own. “Hello?” her voice trembled.

  “WHERE’S MY BOOK?” Mrs. Kingsmore shrieked down the line. “GIVE ME MY BOOK! GIVE ME MY BOOK! GIVE ME MY BOOK!”

  Ruby threw the phone to the floor and wiped her hand on her apron as though she’d touched something truly disgusting. The small black handset had cracked its case and spilled its innards across the lounge carpet. The phone sprang into life again and Ruby screamed as she leapt on the remains, stamping them into oblivion. Eventually, she realised that the phone was no longer ringing and also that a jagged piece of plastic had pierced her slipper and torn the bottom of her foot open.

  She hopped to the kitchen and ran a dishcloth under the tap before sitting in a high-backed chair and inspecting the damage to her foot. She withdrew the piece of plastic and washed the wound, grimacing as she did so.

  She wrapped her foot with a dry towel and gingerly returned her foot back into the slipper. The power was still out and the light was dim in the room as the dark night closed in around her. Outside, the wind was buffeting the windows and the rain was lashing down hard.

  She looked back at the smashed phone lying in pieces on the floor and felt a slip of panic. Her rational mind knew that none of this couldn’t be happening and yet it still was. She tried to remember where she’d left her mobile phone and came up blank. She grabbed a torch from under the sink and had to slap it a couple of times before the beam straightened out and stayed steady. Gordon was always complaining that she didn’t take his preparations seriously and she had taken batteries out of emergency appliances on more than one occasion. At least with the torch she had remembered to put them back, only they didn’t seem to have much life left in them.

  The beam dipped again and she banged the torch hard against her leg, thinking that she could make it work through sheer force of will. She was not a woman who often failed to get her own way.

  She suddenly remembered that she’d left her mobile upstairs in Molly’s room and took a step towards the staircase before a creak from up in the darkness froze her. She did love her daughter and she did possess the maternal gene, it was just that her self-preservation one ran a little deeper.

  Footsteps paced slowly across the landing and she took a step backwards away from them. She swung the torch’s fading beam around the large lounge trying hard to think where Gordon might have left the book. She ran to the bookcase and sta
rted throwing novels and magazines wildly across the room, running her fingers down the spines before discarding them. The book wasn’t there; it wasn’t there.

  She ran out to the hallway and started emptying drawers and tipping them out. She ripped open the doors to the closet and started dragging out coats and scarves. She flung woolen gloves and Molly’s pushchair out as she feverishly searched. She ran for Gordon’s small office and tried to rip the shelves from the walls. She was no longer searching now, only smashing and destroying in a panicked frenzy.

  She heard footsteps, sounding like slapping bare feet on each wooden step as someone descended. She looked around petrified for somewhere, anywhere else to look.

  “IT’S NOT HERE!” she screamed. “I DON’T HAVE IT; IT’S NOT HERE!”

  The torch’s light had completely faded now but she refused to release the metal cylinder as its weight was comforting as she hefted it.

  “The Shelduck: A Study in Behavioral Ecology published in 1983,” Mrs. Kingsmore said in a sweet tone from the shadows.

  “I don’t have it,” Ruby sobbed.

  “The Shelduck: A Study in Behavioral Ecology published in 1983,” the librarian reiterated.

  “Please,” Ruby begged, “it’s not here.”

  “THE SHELDUCK: A STUDY IN BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY PUBLISHED IN 1983!” Mrs. Kingsmore shrieked.

  Ruby threw her hands up to her ears at the woman’s voice which was piercingly loud. She bolted for the kitchen as the shadowy shape rounded the corner, blocking the escape route out of the front door. A small part of her screamed at her to save Molly but a louder part said to save herself.

  She made the kitchen before an unseen force seized her from behind. An undetectable hand clamped around her throat and she struggled for breath. Inexplicably, she started to rise up off the floor as though being hoisted by an invisible noose and she was turned around to face her pursuer.

  Mrs. Kingsmore emerged from the darkness and into the kitchen. The moon was full outside and a break in the black clouds flooded feeble light through the patio doors. Ruby clawed at her throat, desperate for air as the librarian approached.

  The woman flickered in and out of focus like a TV struggling for reception, lines of static blurring her. She seemed sepia in color and her clothes looked old and out of date. Her head hung unnaturally to one side as though loose and not capable of righting itself. She reached out a hand and her mouth opened like a black hole, deep and dark. “My book,” she whispered. “Give me my book,” she cooed in a soft voice, in sharp contrast to her ghastly appearance.

  Ruby felt the world fading away and her hand dropped the torch from her grasp. The metal was sturdy and the bulb didn’t break as it hit the floor. Instead, it bucked into life for one last time. The light hit Mrs. Kingsmore and shattered her into pieces. Ruby felt the pressure break from around her neck and she fell to the floor, coughing and spluttering.

  She looked up as the librarian was starting to reform in a whirl of sepia colours until a shape emerged. Ruby didn’t wait and ran for the doors. She burst through and out into the garden, holding up a hand as the rain whipped hard into her face. She ran down the garden path but in her panic she had forgotten the flooding. Her feet were soon buried in water and she could dimly see that the river had burst its banks and was now a fast flowing torrent.

  She tried to stop but her feet skidded in the mud and before she knew it, she was tumbling into the water. The current was strong and she was pulled forwards, flailing her arms uselessly. More out of luck than judgment, she snagged her hand on the fence at the bottom off the garden. Her legs were now dangling out into the river as the raging torrent tried to suck her away. Her fingers tightened on the fence but her heart sank as the wood began to splinter under her grip.

  A figure ran towards her from the garden and she screamed for help. The large shape seemed infinitely more substantial than the librarian and for the first time her heart rejoiced to see her husband.

  “Gordon, quickly help me,” she yelled loudly as she struggled to keep her grip on the fence.

  But Gordon stopped a few yards from her, carefully watching the rushing water and keeping a safe distance. “You’re still here,” he said sounding disappointed.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she bellowed. “Help me!”

  He looked down at her plight and shook his head. “This is all a little disappointing, to be honest,” he shouted above the howling wind and rain. “I was hoping for maybe a heart attack or a violent death of some kind; at least, that’s what I was promised.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Ruby barked as the wooden fence let out a cracking sound.

  “You wouldn’t believe how easy it was to find some expert help. The internet truly is a wonderful thing. Old Mrs. Kingsmore is a local legend, my dear. Perhaps if you spent more time getting to know our surroundings instead of screwing my boss you might have learnt that.”

  Ruby’s heart sank as she realised that he knew about the affair with Stephen Ferris.

  “Seems that the old librarian gets somewhat of a bee in her bonnet whenever a book goes missing from the older section of the library. Fortunately, hardly anyone uses the place anymore so she never gets to stretch her legs nowadays. If you’re wondering why she came after you, it’s because I opened an account in your name and then took out the book using your new card; then, all I had to do was wait. I was hoping that it would all be over by the time I got home and I’d have an alibi, hence all the late nights recently. But hey ho, nothing ever goes entirely to plan, does it?”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she sobbed as her hand slipped a little further.

  “Because I’ve come to know you Ruby, to know the sort of person that you really are. I know that if I divorced you then you’d take my daughter out of sheer spite and I’d go broke trying to fight you,” Gordon snarled.

  Ruby heard the splintering sound and felt the river about to take her. “Where is it?” she asked, desperately wanting her last words to count. “Where’s the book?”

  “Exactly where it deserves to be,” Gordon smiled coldly as he watched his wife swallowed by the icy water and disappear beneath. “Where it deserves to be.”

  ----------

  Stephen Ferris closed the door against the stormy night outside. He threw down his wet coat and bag onto the kitchen table. Something slid out and he picked it up, shaking his head. He had no idea where the book had come from or why it was in his bag.

  Ten minutes later, he had used the pages for kindling and sat in front of the roaring fire, rubbing his hands against the flames for warmth, just as the phone rang.

  TALE 10.

  “THREE’S A CROWD”

  Monica Donovan squinted against the rain and shoved the heavy trunk with every ounce of strength that she had left to give. She was crouching with her back against the heavy old fashioned travelling box. It was peppered with brass studs and she pushed hard with her trembling legs. The box was over four feet long and around three feet high and it was heavy enough without the added hidden contents.

  Monica was a timid and mousy woman; slim and short with cascading dark curly hair that more often than not covered her features out of design rather than accident. She was 27 but could have passed for at least a decade older as she favoured long shapeless clothing that hung baggily around her form, hiding any sense of shape or figure.

  Her heart lurched in her chest and skipped a couple of beats. She was living with a potentially fatal heart condition called Dilated Cardiomyopathy. It was a condition which caused the heart muscles to dilate, or enlarge; the muscles become weak and thin and, as a result, the lower left chamber of the heart was no longer able to pump blood efficiently. This could lead to heart failure, a common cause of premature death. Her heart only worked at about 40% and she had lived her 27 years with the constant fear of over-exertion. Too much exercise or excitement could lead to her heart fatally failing. There was no cure for the condition and she had to take a regul
ar dosage of beta blockers to stop her heart from getting any weaker.

  The woman next to her strained with equal effort as they inched the trunk towards the edge of the river. Geraldine Nash was the polar opposite of Monica. Tall and blonde with slashed high cheekbones and a full pouty mouth that reveled in its sheer sexuality. She had long legs and a chest that could drown an army. Geraldine was 35 but the years had yet to force gravity upon her. She favoured anything that was bright and tight fitting and the stares that she attracted were nourishment for her soul.

  Together, they pushed with their backs against the trunk until at long last it started to churn its way through the mud and touched the water. The river churned itself with the stormy weather as if eager for feeding and hungry for their offering.

  “It won’t go!” Monica cried out in panic.

  “Yes it will,” Geraldine grunted in reply as she doubled her efforts. “If I have to tear him into pieces with my bare bloody hands, he’s going in.”

  The corner of the trunk gouged out a trench in the water’s muddy edge and started to sink, but Geraldine would not be denied and she started to kick the trunk in pure rage as it dared to defy her wishes.

  Monica crawled backwards on her knees, ignoring the seeping cold earth that was soaking through her trousers. She closed her eyes and tried to stall her heart from going into shock. In the past, due to her condition, she had suffered from shortness of breath, chest pain, palpitations, dizziness and, even occasionally, a loss of consciousness.

  Geraldine had always enthralled and entranced her with her bright colours and vivacious appetite for life. But she had also scared her and she had downright terrified her earlier that evening.

  ----------

  Monica had married Terrence Donavon mainly because he had decided that they would do so. She had been born into a wealthy family who had made their money in shipping but she had little interest in either the business or the wealth that it had accrued. Her mother had committed suicide before she was old enough to come to know the woman - a trophy wife wed to sire an heir, preferably a male one. Her father told a tale of a weak and feeble woman and Monica only had the man for reference. He was a man who had cared little for anyone else’s opinion on the age difference or even the folly of becoming a father as a man approaching his eighties.