Dark Screams, Volume 1
Page 5
Screw you and the Cadillac you rode in on.
November 11—Afternoon
I must say I almost enjoyed our session in your office this morning. Usually I find them boring and repetitive and they leave me bitterly frustrated. As if you didn’t know. But not today.
Did you realize I was watching you as covertly as you always watch me? Probably you did. You don’t miss much I’ll give you that. Except that is for the big issues such as my sanity though I suppose it’s understandable you should be convinced I’m guilty of murder. You’re society’s tool and you have no genuine compassion.
I’m sure you can guess why I was watching you but I’ll tell you anyway. To find out if you’d say anything to indicate you’ve been reading this daybook of mine on the sly. You didn’t, not that I expected you to. Nary a hint of interest in what the magic eyes might be. Not even an oblique reference to anything I’ve written so far. You’re such a cunning psychiatrist head doctor shrink mindsucker. You just sit with your hands folded and mumble about pressure buildups and psychotic breaks and taking responsibility and ask the same pointless questions about my childhood and my relationships with women and my marriage to Lorna while the recorder clicks and whirs and produces another tape for you to add to my file.
Ah, but you’re not infallible. You may well slip up one of these days, just enough so I can be certain you’ve been invading my privacy.
Invading. Invader. That’s what you are, Doctor, an invader like the—
Oh, no. Oh, no. I almost made a little slip of my own there. Wouldn’t you like to know what kind of slip, the significance of the word invader. Sure you would because it’s important, very important in a way you can’t even imagine. You’d like to know and I’d like to tell you but I can’t so you’re not going to find out. I won’t write it down and I won’t let it slip to you in person.
Mum’s the word Doc. Mum’s the word for the duration.
November 13—Evening
Another of our sessions today and still no hint that you’ve been in my drawers.
Hah! Like Myrna Loy’s line to William Powell in the first Thin Man movie: “What’s that man doing in my drawers?” A real howler, Doc, remember? Well, no, I’ll bet you don’t. No plebeian you. You’d never lower yourself to watching old detective movies on TV, not Mr. High and Mighty Doctor Arthur L. Hilliard. What does the L. stand for anyway? Louse? Lickspittle? Wonderful word, lickspittle. Plebeian, too. A college education does wonders for a man’s vocabulary.
I seem to have drifted off on a tangent. Damn drugs, that’s what they do to you. They don’t just keep you calm cool and collected, they screw up your thought processes, shorten your attention span so you can’t concentrate. I think I wrote that before, I know I’ve said it to you any number of times during our sessions. Not that it does me any good to complain.
We were discussing you being in my drawers, secretly reading these “therapeutic jottings” of mine. You didn’t even blink today when I said very casually and offhandedly that your suggestion to keep a daily log was working out better than I’d expected, that I was enjoying writing down all sorts of interesting thoughts and impressions. Didn’t even ask me what they were. “I’m pleased to hear that, Edward. Now perhaps you understand why I believe it’s a worthwhile form of therapy.” That was all you said. And when I said, “Aren’t you curious about what I’m writing?” you just smiled in that supercilious way of yours and said, “Only if you want to share them with me. Do you, Edward?”
Well, we both know they’ve already been shared without my permission, you sneaky bastard. That being the case I see no reason not to repeat the inadvertent slips I made earlier. Grim little teasers you might call them.
Magic eyes. Invaders.
Meaningful, significant? Or do you think I’m trying to mess with your head? You’ll never know.
Dammit, why don’t you admit spying on me and get it over with. Be up-front for a change, be a man instead of a mindsucker.
How about it, Doc? As you’re so fond of saying to me, confession is good for the soul.
November 15—Morning
I’ve taken notice, strong notice, of one of the new inmates. Miss Dorothy Pringle, Ward C, Room 9 at the other end of the hall from mine. She’s young and rather pretty in a wistful, ethereal sort of way. Dark hair, delicate features, on the skinny side but neither flat-chested nor flat-hipped. To look at her you’d think she was a librarian or secretary or grade-school teacher, the kind of meek little woman who would never harm a fly. You’d never take her for a double murderess and a bloody one at that. The hospital grapevine has it that she chopped up her mother and father because they were too strict and kept her a virtual prisoner in their home. A modern-day Lizzie Borden except that she used a meat cleaver instead of an ax and gave them only a few whacks each. True?
I tried to talk to her today but she pretended she didn’t hear me and walked away. Or maybe she really didn’t hear me, she doesn’t seem to be very aware of her surroundings. She reminds me of a puppy wandering around lost in a fog, I even heard her whimper once the way puppies do.
I’d like to screw her.
It’s been more than two years since I had sex with Lorna. I was never unfaithful to my wife in the eleven years we were married, did I tell you that, Doctor? I’m sure I must have. Completely faithful, hardly even looked at another woman in all that time. We had a very healthy sex life and two years is a long time to go without. All the drugs Nurse Ratchet keeps feeding me have lowered my sex drive, no doubt on purpose, but it hasn’t killed it completely. I’m sure I can still perform under the right circumstances.
Yes, I really would like to screw Miss Pringle.
And I think I will.
With her consent preferably but if she won’t give it soon I’ll have to take matters into my own hands so to speak. I’m good with locks, did you know that? They were a hobby of mine when I was younger. I can get out of this room anytime I want, believe that or not. Late some night I’ll slip out when I’m sure the hall is empty and hurry to Miss Pringle’s room and before she knows what’s happening I’ll be in her drawers.
See, Doc? See what you and Nurse Ratchet and the rest of your miserable minions have reduced me to?
November 16—Afternoon
I’ve just returned from another session with the mindsucker. Not a word about Miss Pringle or my threatened late-night attack on her. There certainly should have been if he’s reading these pages, he wouldn’t let such a blatant statement of premeditated assault pass without attempting to talk me out of it or at least addressing the subject. Would he? Is he that cold and unfeeling, that remiss in his duties?
No. No, I don’t think so.
I’m beginning to believe he wasn’t lying to me after all and this logbook really is private.
November 19—Late Afternoon
I managed to get Miss Pringle’s attention just after lunch long enough to hold a fifteen-second conversation with her. It didn’t amount to much, an exchange of only a few words each, but she favored me with a ghost of a smile before she wandered away.
She’s such a sad person. Pathetic, really. I like her in spite of her having filleted Mom and Pop and the zombie state she exists in now. There’s no doubt in my mind she had just cause for picking up that meat cleaver, as I had just cause to do what I did two years ago. If there is sufficient justification for a violent act and in my case if not Miss Pringle’s the person who commits it knows right from wrong no matter what the law and the shrinks say, then that person is not—I repeat, not—crazy.
I feel a kinship with Miss Pringle and I want to be her friend. Her friend, nothing more. I never had any intention of attacking her in her bed, what I wrote was a test calculated to smoke out Dr. Hilliard if he really had been reading these pages. I would never force myself on a woman, I would rather be chemically castrated than commit rape for sexual gratification or any other reason. I am not the monster everyone in a position of authority in this place believes me to be
.
Hilliard still didn’t react to my bogus threat at our session today. So now I’m convinced my privacy has not been invaded. What I set down here is for my eyes only.
November 20—Morning
I must admit that Hilliard was right about the positive effects of writing a daybook. It does tend to release tension and focus the mind though my thoughts would have better clarity if it weren’t for the damn drugs. For a long time I refused—no, I was unable—to think unemotionally and with a certain amount of clinical detachment about the magic eyes and that day in the home I shared with Lorna. It was all too painful, too horrific, the details encased in a fog like the one poor Miss Pringle wanders in. Now I’ve regained some perspective. Now I feel I can examine the events objectively and that it would be a good idea to do so by setting the facts down here.
First and foremost I did not kill Lorna. I would never have harmed her, never never never.
But I did kill the thing that killed her. The real murderer, the monstrous thing that invaded Lorna’s body and took it over and destroyed her.
The thing with the magic eyes.
Demon? Incubus? Alien entity like the ones in the Body Snatchers films? I don’t know, I can only hope and pray it was the only one of its kind. All I know is that on that morning two years ago I looked into the face of my wife lying beside me in bed expecting to see Lorna’s beautiful gray eyes when they opened and what I saw instead my God what I saw instead! The shock was devastating, the terror all-consuming. Impossible to believe yet impossible not to believe.
Magic is the word that came to me as I looked into the eyes that stared out at me from Lorna’s face, a blacker magic than any ever conjured up by a human sorcerer. Deep shining pools of blackness with unspeakable horrors swimming in them, changing and shifting like images in a devil’s kaleidoscope, each one more terrible than the last. Pure living evil. Like peering into the depths of hell.
When I recoiled and shouted, “What in God’s name are you? What have you done to Lorna?” the thing that had been my beloved wife laughed at me. Laughed! And when I babbled out what I saw it laughed again then pretended to pout then grew angry and accused me of having absurd hallucinations. I cringed and fled but I couldn’t stay away, I was drawn back in the glimmering hope that I actually had been hallucinating. But I hadn’t, I wasn’t. The magic eyes were even more obscene the second time I stared into them.
I had no choice then. Lorna no longer existed, she had been consumed by whatever had entered her body and the knowledge filled me with a savage need to avenge her, to kill the hateful invader before it could do God knows what to me and others. I took the knife from the kitchen and blinded one magic eye and then the other, covered the blackness and the evil images with crimson.
I know how all of this sounds. Of course I know. That’s why I didn’t tell the truth to the police or my public defender or the judge and jury or any of the court-appointed psychiatrists who examined me or Dr. Hilliard once they put me in this asylum. They would not have believed me. They already considered me a criminal psychopath; the truth would merely have convinced them they were right and made my ordeal even worse than it was and has been, ensured I would be kept locked up with no possibility of ever being released.
Lorna. Lorna. I miss you so. I hope and pray you’re at rest and in heaven if there is a heaven and that you know that what I did I did because I loved you.
November 24—Afternoon
Miss Pringle has begun to acclimate and assimilate. She still seems dazed at times, but her movements are no longer quite so zombielike and she is capable now of holding a reasonably coherent if lackluster conversation for minutes at a time. I seek her out whenever I can before and after meals and in what the staff euphemistically refers to as the garden though it’s more difficult outside because of the constant supervision of the intern/guards. She likes me I think as much as I like her. She smiles whenever we speak now, sad lost smiles that touch my heart.
I hope we’ll be good friends someday soon. I have no other friends in here, no one I can talk to without being deluged with loonybabble or psychobabble in response.
November 25—Late Morning
Dr. Hilliard seems pleased with my “progress” as he calls it, though he’s still after me to “admit my guilt” because only then can there be true healing. Sorry, Doc. How can I admit to guilt when I’m not guilty? How can I be healed when I’m not sick?
November 26—Afternoon
I went for a short walk with Dorothy through the garden this morning. Very pleasant. We’re on a first-name basis now, Dorothy and Edward. She really does seem to be coming out of her shell. Such a sweet girl. She must have been tormented beyond reason to pick up that cleaver.
November 27—Evening
To my surprise the amount or strength of the drugs I’m forced to consume daily has been reduced by an unspecified amount. Dr. Hilliard informed me of that at today’s session and Nurse Ratchet confirmed it a few minutes ago by bringing different capsules to dissolve in my nightly cup of water. Well, hallelujah. Some progress is being made after all.
November 29—Morning
Oh God no not again not here not here!
It can’t be but it is there’s no mistake.
I sought out Dorothy in the recreation room after breakfast; she was modeling something in clay with her back to me and when I walked up behind her and said her name she turned smiling and I looked into her eyes but they weren’t hers anymore, they were deep shining pools of blackness with horrors beyond description swimming in them—
Magic eyes.
Dorothy has been invaded as Lorna was.
I don’t understand how it could have happened or why, all I know is that it did it did there is nothing on earth like the monstrous blackness of the magic eyes. I stared and stared into them and then I spun away and fled back here to my room terrified my head burning like fire.
What am I going to do?
November 30—Late Afternoon
Calmer now. But no less terrified.
I went to the dining hall for lunch but not to eat, I’d have vomited up anything I tried to force down. I went there to look into that sweet face again to be sure absolutely sure I wasn’t mistaken. And I wasn’t, I’m not. The face was Dorothy’s face but the eyes were the same evil writhing ones I’d looked into earlier. Dorothy Pringle is dead. All that’s alive in her body is one of the things with the magic eyes.
Now I know what I must do. I’ve known from that terrible moment of recognition this afternoon but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it until now. Once again I have no choice. I must destroy the invader that destroyed Dorothy as I destroyed the one that took my Lorna from me and I must do it quickly. Tonight, late tonight.
I have no knife or access to one, inmates aren’t allowed sharp instruments of any kind but I don’t need a knife, I already have what I need because Dr. Hilliard made a slight miscalculation, a fortunate error in judgment when he insisted I write a daybook and provided the tools to do so. This pen has a felt tip but when thrust with sufficient force it will serve as well as a knife.
I won’t have any difficulty getting out of my room. The locks on all the doors are nothing more than a way to keep the inmates segregated at night. The keepers don’t worry about any of us getting out of our cells, why should they. The halls and grounds are patrolled day and night, an unscalable fence surrounds the entire asylum, there’s no way anybody can escape. And I really do have a way with locks.
I’ll let myself out at three a.m. Fitzgerald’s dark night of the soul and make my way to Dorothy’s room. The magic eyes will surely be closed at that hour, pretending sleep if not actually asleep so I won’t have to look into their foul, crawling depths before I do what must be done.
Even if I’m not caught tonight I have no doubt Dr. Hilliard will find out I’m responsible. But it doesn’t matter, the consequences don’t matter. Only the destruction of the invader matters.
Dead of Night
Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow oh God I’m so sick my hand is shaking so badly I can barely hold the pen.
I was ready to leave but I had to use the bathroom first and when I finished washing my hands I glanced into the unbreakable shaving mirror above the sink and it was my face that looked back at me but not my eyes oh not my eyes! Again once again I stared into the black roiling pools the evil swirling images the horrors beyond human endurance!
But the thing that invaded me does not have full control yet I’m still able to think I still have the will to function. No choice again no choice but to do what must be done and do it fast fast fast before it’s too late.
First blind Dorothy’s magic eyes.
Then blind mine.
Murder in Chains
Simon Clark
I was chained to him by the throat.
Picture this: an underground vault that’s big—really big—like the inside of a church. Running the entire length of that vault is a twenty-foot-wide channel of fast-flowing water. The water is black. The sound it makes is the roar of an angry beast. I’m lying there, staring at him. Around my neck is a steel collar. Running from the collar is a chain that’s ten feet long. The other end of the chain is padlocked to a steel collar around the neck of the man that lies unconscious on a concrete slab. The stranger’s got the muscular build of a pro wrestler and long wild-man-of-the-woods hair. He wears one of those all-in-one white paper suits that murder suspects are given when their clothes have been taken away to be examined for their victim’s blood. Even though he’s asleep he radiates BRUTAL. Terror turns my blood to ice. I look up at the lights bolted to the curving brickwork that forms the ceiling and ask myself aloud: