Box Set: Scary Stories- Vols. 3 & 4 (Chamber Of Horror Book 8)

by Billy Wells

  “If you come any closer, I'll jump.”

  “Take it easy. Tell me about it. I'm all ears. I want to help you.”

  “Fuck off, copper,” The young man snapped. “I'm not in the mood for your bullshit.”

  “Did some girl dump you?”

  “No… Yes… I don't know. I'm confused, and I'm really hurting emotionally.”

  “Sometimes life can be a bitch, but it’s a long way down, and there’s no turning back. You don’t get a second chance. Are you sure you want to throw your life away tonight?”

  “Can't you go away and write someone a parking ticket? There's nothing you can say that's going to make a difference. My life is over. She was my soul mate. The only girl I'll ever love.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe not,” Josh said. “Answer one question before you piss your life away. What do you have to lose? You're going to jump anyway. I can't stop you. I'm too far away to reach you in time.”

  “Let's make it quick. What's your question?”

  “Let's say there are five hundred high schools in North Dakota.”

  “Why North Dakota, Sherlock?”

  “Bear with me. Let's say you attended one of those high schools. You also went through elementary, middle school, and then high school with most of the females in your class.”

  “What's your point?”

  “Let's say you were born in one of those small towns, and you lived and died there. You never went anywhere else. Odds are you would've fallen in love and married someone in your high school. So, if there are five hundred high schools in North Dakota, you could have fallen in love and married someone in any one of them. Consequently, there's no such thing as one girl you could ever love. Thinking otherwise is some adolescent bullshit that I see here on the bridge about every other week. You’re too old to think that way.”

  The young man shrugged his shoulders, and looked back into the dark water below.

  “So my question is,” Josh continued, “Are you really going to throw your life away over one girl when I’ve just proved there are thousands and thousands of girls all over the country you could love and who could love you? Are you really going to be that stupid?”

  The young man stood looking back at Josh for a time without saying a word, mulling over what he'd said carefully.

  As Josh spoke, he edged closer to the distraught young man about twenty years old who only moments ago was ready to jump.

  “Don't come any closer. I know what you're trying to do.”

  The police officer stopped, but continued to speak calmly, “If I'm wrong about you being able to fall in love with five hundred girls in North Dakota, I'd like to hear you tell me where my logic is wrong.”

  “I can't dispute your logic, but love is from the heart. It's not about logic. I’m hurting, man. I'm as low as I can go.”

  “Do us both a favor, don't throw your life away because some girl dumped you. You don't look like the hunchback of Notre Dame from here. You don't have three heads or one eyeball in the middle of your head. There's no reason why you can't find another girl to fall in love with. What do you say? Go on home and think about it. If you want to commit suicide tomorrow, come back during Chad Harper’s beat. Let him get the blemish on his record, not mine. What do you say?”

  The young man started to cry as he slumped on the railing. Josh ran to him and tried to comfort him.

  “What your name?”

  “Justin.”

  “Justin, I'm Josh Cramer. You're not the first person to be dumped by a woman, and you won't be the last. Believe me I had my share of dumpings and heartbreaks before I met Jessica. We just got married this past weekend.”

  “You really think I’ll find someone else who’ll love me, and I can love like…” he paused. Then, said sadly, “Mary.”

  “My father told me one time, when Mary called him, he had to be careful before he spoke, because he didn’t know which Mary was calling.”

  “Well, I guess I’m not like your father, I’m just looking for one girl to love me.”

  “I was just trying to make a point, Justin. Trust me. I’m not like him either. Just believe you will find someone else, get married, and live happily ever after.”

  Josh wiped the tears from his cheek. “Well. I do feel a lot better now, officer. I guess you saved my life. I was really going to jump. I would have if you hadn't come along. Are you going to write me up?”

  “What for? Standing on a bridge at midnight is not committing a crime in this town.”

  Josh felt good about helping the young fellow through what could've been a disaster. He couldn't wait to tell Jessica he'd saved a young man from committing suicide that evening.

  “Thanks, Josh. I'll never forget you. Maybe we'll meet again somewhere. Thanks again.”

  Josh removed a card from his wallet and said, "This is my personal business card. If you ever feel like committing suicide again, call me anytime day or night.”

  “I will,” Justin said.

  “And if you ever want to buy a house, call me about that, too.” They both laughed.

  Justin headed toward the ramp leading from the bridge, and Josh followed behind him. They separated then, and Josh returned to his cruiser in the parking lot. He checked in with the precinct. It was a quiet night with nothing going down.

  He started driving around the area he patrolled every night.

  He noticed some rummies passing a cheap bottle of wine around next to an oil drum they used to burn paper and kindling to keep warm. He stopped the car and lowered the window. “How's it going tonight, fellas? Anybody hit the lotto when they called it at eleven o'clock?”

  “We wish,” one of the unshaven homeless men answered sucking on a wine bottle.”

  “Well, maybe tomorrow night.”

  Another man warming his hands by the fire called out, “Did that young fellow find you?”

  “What young fellow, Jasper?” Josh asked.

  “He stopped and asked about you about an hour ago. We told him you'd probably be checking the bridge for jumpers, and he headed in that direction.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was about twenty-five or thirty, and all I can remember is he wore dark clothes,” Jasper said scratching his head.

  “Thanks, fellas. I talked to a young fellow not long ago, who was thinking about jumping, but I don't think it was the same man you saw. Thanks for the heads up though.”

  Josh drove away, puzzled by the young man asking about him. It must've been Justin; there was no one else on the bridge. But what did it mean?

  His business phone vibrated in his front pants pocket. The ringer was off, but he scrambled to answer it in time.

  On the third ring, he wrenched it from his pants pocket. It was the first time it had rung in a month. “Hello, Josh Cramer, Real Estate.”

  “Hey, Josh. This is Justin, the guy on the bridge.”

  Concerned, Josh asked, “You're not considering suicide already, are you?” It hasn't been an hour yet.”

  “No. I'm not thinking about suicide. I just told you that bullshit to make you feel sorry for me.”

  “So you're the guy who asked the old-timers about me?”

  “Yeah, I'm the one. They said you checked the bridge every night for jumpers, and it gave me a brainstorm to pretend to be one of them. It worked like a charm.”

  “What was the ruse all about, Justin? Do I know you?”

  “No, you don't know me. I'm Jessica's old boyfriend. I'm the one who was going to marry her before you horned in. With the phone number you gave me, I was able to get directory assistance to give me your address. I just left your apartment. Jessica wasn't happy to see me, so, I'm leaving town.”

  “What did you do?” Josh shrieked in horror.

  “I told her when she dumped me, she was the only girl I'd ever love, and I would never let her marry anyone else. She ignored my threat.”

  “What did you do?” Josh screamed.

  “I kept hitting her, and hittin
g her, and hitting her with this frying pan. I don't think you'll be able to recognize her now. I messed her up pretty bad.”

  “You killed my wife?”

  “Yes, she’s dead all right, several times over.”

  “If I get my hands on you....“

  Justin interrupted, “I'm glad we had that talk on the bridge. When I left your place, I was feeling pretty down after you tried to help me, but then I remembered what you said, and I felt a whole lot better. Like you said, there might be five hundred women in North Dakota you can fall in love with and thousands everywhere else. Now I don't feel so guilty about battering Jessica’s head into a pulp. I knew your philosophy would get you through this small bump in the road.”

  Now Josh was crying and thinking about the bridge himself.

  “After all,” Justin said with a smirk. Who gives a fuck about Jessica when there are so many other fish in the sea? Right. Josh?”

  Justin hung up, and Josh redialed several times, but no one answered.

  After racing home at breakneck speed in his cruiser and verifying the horror Justin had described, Josh headed back to the bridge.

  When he saw the rummies huddled around their small fire trying to keep warm, he waved.

  The water was very cold in October.

  THE ABHORRENT CLUB

  On January 31, the Abhorrent Club, a group of one hundred multimillionaires gathered at the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan to plan their upcoming annual extravaganza.

  In recent years, it was getting harder to find disgusting things to do. At last year's gala, they played a series of horrific snuff films showing real men and women being tortured and brutally murdered in HD quality with Surround Sound. The year before, they’d watched a parade of beautiful females, who’d been abducted while on vacation in Europe, being sold as sex slaves by a drunken trafficking lord. After this had become too boring, they’d traveled across town to another venue to watch starved Dobermans fight to the death for a piece of raw meat.

  This kind of entertainment was expensive, but these degenerates had the cash. Boredom was always a problem for twisted, affluent people, eternally looking for a thrill at any cost.

  Byron Kingsberry tapped on the microphone and opened the floor for suggestions. Peering across the expanse of white-linen-covered tables and the one hundred members attending the luncheon that cost twenty thousand dollars, he didn't see a single hand rise.

  “Come on people,” Kingsberry shouted in disgust. “I’ve chosen the event the past two years, and except for several members passing out and throwing up, both affairs were overwhelmingly successful.”

  Someone in the back of the room yelled, “That’s why you should do it again this year, Byron.”

  After a round of applause, Mephisto McMullan rose from his chair. “I've always thought an orgy with well hung male models and big bosomed females would make for a never to be forgotten evening.”

  “That idea has come up before," Byron said, "and not all of the members want to participate in communal sex. Some, to put it bluntly, don't want to take their clothes off in front of the other members. But the real problem with the idea is having an orgy is just good clean fun. It doesn't make you want to puke your guts out in disgust, and that's what the Abhorrent Club is all about.”

  “You misunderstand me, Byron. I propose we choose ugly, deformed models not beautiful ones to have sex with, and that will be disgusting.”

  “That is a novel idea,” Kingsberry said, making a note on a pad. “I believe that does deserve a vote in spite of the prudes who don't want to undress.”

  McMullan added, “I'm sure not every person wanted to be party to watching real people being murdered in Mexico last year, but we went ahead with it anyway.”

  “Your point is well taken. No proposal for any event will ever get one hundred percent approval and participation. Okay, we'll put that one on the list as a possibility. We need at least two more suggestions and some rebuttal, then we'll take a vote.”

  Christian Peabody timidly rose and stood in the middle of the room. “Do you think we could have some slaves fight to the death in one of the outdoor pavilions like they had in the coliseum in Rome? That certainly would be the height of depravity in this day and age.”

  Kingsberry shook his head and turned toward him. “The problem with that, Christian, is it's hard to find formidable Caucasian slaves with homicidal tendencies to add to the mix. And as in the case with most basketball teams, the majority of our members don't want all the participants to be black. It's okay if half of the gladiators are Afro-American, but not all of them.”

  “Curses. It’s a shame we can't find white combatant slaves anymore. What is the world coming to?”

  “Well, let's put it on the list and see how many would like to pursue it.”

  Raul Fulton, who was obviously tipsy and almost knocked over his chair when he stood, reminisced. “I remember when I was a little boy, I went to a carnival, and I saw a really sick freak show with all kinds of grotesque and gruesome people. I can't think of anything we could do to sink to the lowest level of bad taste and depravity than organizing a really horrific group of misfits in a freak show.”

  “Egads, Raul! I like that idea. I think you may have come up with a winner,” Byron said enthusiastically.

  After another hour of discussion of the pros and cons of the possible events, the Club took a vote on the final three despicable suggestions for this year’s gala. The freak show won by a landslide. Sex with ugly deformed undesirables came in second.

  * * *

  Finally, the long-awaited night came. Block long limousines arrived at a spooky estate on a bluff overlooking the ocean at the tip of Cape Cod.

  The club hired one of the most expensive and prestigious chefs in Manhattan to cater the affair. Mephisto McMullan’s personal jet delivered the cuisine only an hour before the event took place.

  The committee handpicked the servers according to their degree of deformity. If they could carry a tray, regardless of any shocking physical atrocity, they were selected.

  The eerie surroundings of the mansion where several horror movies had been filmed had just the right atmosphere for the occasion. The decorator for the event removed the traditional paintings from the walls and replaced them with the carnival posters advertising the freaks headlining the show, which was to last for about two hours.

  As the members of the club circulated with their cocktails and conversed about the startling images filling the walls around them, everyone could feel the excitement building.

  Byron and his wife, Amelia, went out on the balcony with their cocktails after dinner and watched the waves crashing on the rocks below. “Do you remember what movies were filmed here?” Amelia asked, pulling her shawl a little tighter around her.

  “I believe they said one of the versions of Agatha Christie's novel, And Then There Were None. Maybe the one called Ten Little Indians.”

  They couldn't have picked a scarier place. It's awesome, particularly with the sand dunes, the sound of the surf outside, and all those carnival posters with those god-awful faces of human monsters.”

  “You're right, Amelia, and I hate to admit it, but Raul may have selected the all time gross out event in our history, and that’s saying something.”

  “Well, it's almost eight o'clock. Let's go into the auditorium. I want to be sure to get a front row seat.”

  “Do you think we’ll be splattered with blood if we sit that close?”

  “I can only hope.”

  “Did you remember your vomit bag?”

  “Of course, I wouldn't think of going to the show without it.”

  Finally, everyone was seated and bubbling over with anticipation.

  When the curtain rose, two young men in tuxedos wheeled out two conjoined brothers without arms and legs. They were nude, and massive floodlights above the stage displayed every shocking detail of their deformity, the body piercings, and the grotesque tattoos. Four enormous monitors, two on ea
ch side panned in so the members not as close to the stage could see every detail in startling clarity. The sound of members throwing up two-hundred-dollar a plate dinners and the consequent stench of it added to the appalling morbidity of the first act.

  Suddenly, a wail of hysterical laughter, reminiscent of a scalded hyena, erupted from Amelia Kingsberry’s strident vocal chords. Everyone turned to glare at her, trying to understand what could be hilarious about the pitiful being on the stage. A voice with a British accent droned the name of the disease and the details of it in case anyone present was interested. Afterward, two men wheeled the brothers off stage as they made faces at the audience.

  After a minute of breath catching and time to signal the waiter for another cocktail, a naked woman about four feet tall with the head of an ape swung from the sidelines and landed on a red X in the middle of the stage. She looked right and then left, and without warning bounded to the lip of the apron. There, she let out a piercing scream that rivaled Johnny Weissmuller’s legendary Tarzan call that almost every Tarzan after him used.

  The front row recoiled backwards in horror, several spilling their drinks. Then, the she-ape grinned broadly. Her piercing eyes and dazzling white teeth contrasted with her black hairy head. Just as before, the Brit commentator gave the name and details of her disease that caused her abnormality.

  Then a short horizontal bar suspended by ropes from above swept from the rear of the stage to directly above the she-ape's head. She grabbed it with enormous hands, catapulted high above the audience, and disappeared into the darkness on the far side of the auditorium. The curtain went down to uproarious applause.

  “Bravo!” Mephisto McMullan shouted, which precipitated an even bigger round of applause from the members.

  “Raul, this is spectacular,” someone shouted.

  After a longer delay, which allowed those seated in the front row to replace the drinks they’d spilled, the curtain opened. Suddenly, from a dark stage, a spotlight shown on a woman's blonde hair. She too was completely naked except for a cloth bag tied about her waist. Her body rippled with muscles like a bodybuilder.