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

by Billy Wells

  As she came closer and closer, the golden crescents of her nipple jewelry glistened in the dazzling stage lights. The black Gothic makeup around her eyes held the audience spellbound. Then, she reached into the bag and withdrew the biggest, ugliest rat anyone had ever seen and bit its head off. Blood spurted in all directions until she turned her face upward and raising the headless carcass, let the blood wash over her body.

  Amelia's piercing hysterical laugh was like an amplified fart at the funeral of the pope. It threatened every eardrum and crystal goblet in the room. As various women puked their guts out, Amelia's tirade continued until Byron on the brink of lunacy, turned and slapped her so hard she fell from her chair onto the floor. “Amelia, this is not funny. You're ruining this wonderful show for everyone. Shut the fuck up.”

  Amelia struggled to her feet and ran for the sidelines sobbing. Byron stood and said to everyone, “I sincerely apologize for my wife's outburst.”

  Everyone's gaze returned to the blood splattered stage, now littered with two more headless rats. The blonde rat killer ended her act by somersaulting offstage. The curtains closed, and the audience buzzed about the act on and off stage while the cleanup crew prepared for the next act.

  When the curtain finally reopened, the agitated din of the audience quickly subsided. The men in tuxedos wheeled out Penguin Boy, a pitifully deformed creature with hands and feet attached directly to his torso. He proceeded to do several card tricks, and he sang a beautiful rendition of Unchained Melody. The Brit announcer named his malady and the details of the disease in the same monotone as before.

  Someone on the right yelled, ”Where is Michael Buffer when you need him?”

  Penguin Boy ended his act by blowing a perfect smoke ring, then curling his tongue around a lit cigarette and making it disappear inside his mouth for a time and then reappear still burning.

  As the boy waddled offstage, someone in the back screamed, “More blood!” The audience cheered.

  The first four acts were followed by: No Jaw, a man with his jaw and ears below his face; Serpentine Lady, a woman who could wiggle like a snake and bend her body parts in any direction; Pinhead, a man with the small cone shaped head on a normally proportioned body; Rubber Man, a man whose face hung down below his knees. And finally, The Human Torso, a man born with no arms and legs finished the first act. Everyone cheered with delight at the most entertaining show ever.

  The curtain went down for intermission. Several of the most deformed waiters served drinks and heavy hors d'oeuvres in the spacious lobby. The Missing Link, a man who looked like something between an ape and a prehistoric man, did card tricks for added color.

  Mephisto approached Raul, “Let me compliment you again for your selection of this year's event. I must say, I never thought a show like this would be this exciting. The freaks not only have horrific deformities, they also have incredible acts, except for Penguin Boy. They aren't just sitting there drooling at you; they’re performing like champions. Where did we find freaks, who are also talented entertainers?”

  “Believe it or not, there is an agency that specializes in freak show entertainment. These pitiful souls make extra money at special functions in addition to their normal venues. Unfortunately, well-meaning people who don't know what the fuck they are doing are causing them not to be able to remain independent. They are campaigning against shows like this, saying they are in poor taste. This cuts off the only income these poor devils can find since it’s almost impossible for them to find a normal job. They still make good money in circuses and carnivals, but now their supplementary income opportunities have been taken away since they are not politically correct.”

  “That is sad,” Raul said, sucking on a blue cheese stuffed olive he removed from his empty martini glass. “By the way, I also love the scary mansion where we're holding the event. It's so deliciously dark as a dungeon except in the auditorium.”

  Byron walked up to them, holding a fresh Grey Goose martini. “I heard you say you like the venue I chose for the event.”

  “It certainly adds an eerie ambiance to the show,” Raul said, looking at the she-ape poster on the wall. “When they dim the lights, I can feel a chill on the back of my neck. And when the lights go out completely, well, I won’t embarrass myself with those details. By the way, old man, sorry about Amelia.”

  “She must have had too much to drink,” Byron explained. “I'm sure she's embarrassed by her lack of judgment at laughing at something not funny to anyone else.”

  McMullan replied, “Some people laugh when they are frightened to keep their sanity. She might be one of them.”

  A weird gong sounded.

  “I guess it's time to go back into the auditorium again,” Byron shouted to everyone.

  “I can't wait to see what's next,” Mephisto said excitedly.

  After everyone was seated, Byron was surprised Amelia was still absent. He called her on his cell, but she didn't answer. The curtains started up, and he put his phone away.

  On the stage, the spotlights were fixed on a masked, gagged woman strapped to a platform. She seemed to be trying to free herself from bondage.

  Then something between a horse and a man galloped from the wings to the left on all fours to center stage. He had a long blonde mane and a long narrow equine face with pronounced buckteeth. His eyes were further apart and situated on the side of his head, not far from his ears. He made a whinnying sound, and then his loud bellowing laugh seemed to shake the building.

  Then, the enormous creature stood completely erect like a normal man. Standing eight feet tall, his enormous muscles bulged with Herculean power. The audience gasped at the sight of his magnificent physique, and most specifically, the size of his enormous, erect penis. The shaft was not only frightfully long, but frightfully stout in girth as well.

  He strode directly to the platform, vertically positioned so it faced the audience. He leapt on to the platform, climbed onto the squirming woman, and straddled her like he'd just completed a pushup. Placing the tip of his shaft into her vagina, he hovered above her so that as many members as possible could see through his legs. In the four huge monitors situated around the room, the woman’s shapely thighs seemed small in relationship to his manhood. Every person sat in awe at the length of his shaft compared to the distance to the table. Every person cringed at the thought of what would happen next.

  Then like a human pile driver, he thrust his manhood into her only halfway. The woman on the table spasmed in agony, and the cameras panned in for a close-up to record each gut wrenching thrust until the shaft disappeared entirely inside of her. There was no applause. No one moved a muscle. They just sat paralyzed in shock and disbelief. The half horse, half man thing dismounted her and slid back onto the floor. His torso was covered with blood as he bowed, flexed his bulging muscles, and laughed defiantly, showing every bucktooth in his head. Then, dropping to all fours, he galloped off stage.

  The audience could see the blood pooling around the limp female body. Byron couldn't process what he had just seen, and neither could anyone else who had witnessed the ultimate in depraved acts. He had an eerie feeling in the pit of his stomach. Where was Amelia? She'd been gone too long.

  While the curtain went down, he saw the two young men wheeling the woman away to the left. Two other men with buckets and mops headed toward center stage.

  When the curtains closed off the horror completely, Byron jumped up and moved quickly in the direction of the woman and the platform.

  He bounded up a short flight of stairs and disappeared behind the curtain. He saw the men enter a long hallway backstage and rushed toward them.

  “Please stop!” he shouted.

  They stopped in midstride and turned toward him. Immediately, he saw the faces of the young men were really masks. They were so well crafted he had not been able to detect this even from his front row seat.

  He pushed past them and removed the bloody sheet covering the woman's body. The woman also wore a mask. With t
rembling hands, he lifted it from her face. When Byron saw Amelia’s dead eyes frozen in horror and blood flowing from her mouth, he screamed even louder and longer than his wife had earlier. Then to add to the nightmare, the men removed their masks, and Byron recoiled from a sight no human eyes could see and remain sane. He thought his scream transformed into a hysterical wail. He even detected a slight strain of scalded hyena in the tone.

  The thing on the right gripped Byron with steel hands and said to the pitiful creature next to him, "I think this guy will make a good Frog Man for the second show. Once we break all his bones, he'll have hyper-extendable joints just like the disease calls for. No one will no the difference.”

  The creature nodded since he had no tongue.

  Byron started struggling desperately to escape, but to no avail.

  "Your wife's not laughing anymore, is she?” the thing said, “and you'll be joining her shortly. None of you degenerate clowns are getting out of here alive. Your group had The Human Torso’s sister killed in your snuff film last year. Now all of you are going to pay. You’ll find out first hand how it feels to be one of the main attractions in a freak show.”

  A light bulb went off in the thing’s feeble brain. “Do you juggle by any chance? Can you do any card tricks?”

  The pitiful thing with no tongue looked at his colleague like he was a moron. Byron kept screaming.

  “What was I thinking?” the creature said, turning toward Byron and breaking two of his fingers. “Forget about the juggling and the magic. Frog Man won’t be able to do any tricks with all his bones broken.”

  DEAD

  Noah and Isabella sat on the sofa and loveseat watching American Idol when the doorbell rang.

  “Who could that be?” Noah said. “No one comes to visit at 10 p.m., not even a Jehovah's Witness.”

  “Maybe they'll go away, if you simply ignore it.”

  “They can hear the TV. They know we're in here. Maybe one of the neighbors needs something. I’d better answer it.”

  “Suit yourself, Noah. I wouldn't answer it. I'm in my pajamas.”

  Noah rose and crept toward the foyer. The doorbell sounded a second time. When he reached the front door, he sneaked a peek through the peephole. What Noah saw took his breath away. He couldn't move or speak as he peered in disbelief at the figure on the porch.

  “Let me in, Dad.”

  “Who are you?” Noah said, not wanting to acknowledge what his brain had just processed.

  “Don't you know your own son?”

  “Who is it, Noah?” Isabella shouted from the living room.

  “He says he's Jaden.”

  “Jaden? Tell him the joke’s not funny, and we're going to call the police if he doesn't leave us alone.”

  Noah remembered the way his son looked the last time he saw him. He ignored his wife’s protests and opened the door. A bedraggled young man in a wrinkled suit streaked with dirt stood under the porch light. His eyes were unmistakably his son’s. He gasped and couldn't put a sentence together.

  Isabella saw the figure and moved swiftly toward the foyer. She let out a small scream when she saw him. Her hand shot to her mouth, and her legs were so weak she could barely stand.

  Noah stepped aside and let Jaden, who died in an automobile accident eleven years before, enter the house.

  Let's go into the kitchen,” Jaden said. “My clothes are a little funky. I don't want to sit on the sofa like this.”

  His parents followed their son into the kitchen, and they all sat in the same seats they’d always occupied when Jaden was alive.

  “I don't understand,” Noah said, “You can't be our son. He's buried in Morningside Cemetery.”

  “I was only buried for a few hours, Dad. The undertaker had his crew dig me up after the funeral. He was going to resell the coffin to someone else. His men put me in a large trash bag and dumped me in a hole somewhere out of town. I crawled away before the rats could get to me.”

  “How could you be alive? You’d been embalmed, for God’s sake.”

  “I was never embalmed. The undertaker got drunk that night and forgot to embalm me. I was messed up in the accident. My face was so obliterated; my casket was closed at the funeral. It was a circus of errors I tell you, but I escaped.”

  “What your saying makes no sense. You were mangled in the crash. The officer at the scene told us you died instantly. Even if you weren’t embalmed, your head and your chest were crushed. You were stone cold dead.”

  “So does my head and body looked crushed now?”

  “No. You seem better, but have you looked in the mirror lately?”

  “Of course. Look, Mom and Dad. When I reached the pearly gates, my guardian angel saved me and took me under his wing.”

  Noah and Isabella looked at each other, trying to make sense of what Jaden was telling them, but couldn’t.

  “So, where have you been for the last eleven years?” his mother asked skeptically, her face wet with tears.

  “I’ve been providing services to my guardian angel in exchange for him making me whole again.”

  “I’m sorry, son,” his mother replied. “I can’t get my mind around this guardian angel thing right now.”

  “So, why have you returned now, after all this time?” his father asked, in bewilderment.

  “I’m your son. I belong here with you in the world of the living, not the world of the dead. I plan to start where I left off tomorrow. How is Sophia doing? I want to marry her and start a family right away.”

  “I'm sorry, Jaden. She married Liam Nelson three years ago, and she has two children now.”

  “She dumped me and married that asshole Liam Nelson?”

  “What did you expect her to do? You were dead and buried as far as she knew for eight years.”

  “I guess I’ll have to find someone else. I never thought this would happen. Well, at least I can call Jesse Simpson and talk to him about getting my old job back at Windows on the World.”

  His father looked puzzled and dampened his enthusiasm, “I don’t know where you’ve been and why you don’t know it, but terrorists crashed two 747s into the World Trade Center in 2001. Both towers collapsed, and about three thousand people were killed. I believe everyone present at the restaurant on the top floor of the tower was killed.”

  “I can’t believe this. Well, maybe I can get my old job back as manager of Borders. Certainly, they must be a possibility.”

  “Sorry, son. Borders folded. People buy e-books today. Paperbacks and hardcovers are quickly becoming obsolete. Also, smart phones have replaced CDs. A lot of things have changed since you died in 2000.”

  “So, what have you been doing for this guardian angel all these years?” Isabella asked nervously.

  “My guardian angel has kept me so busy doing his bidding, I never had time for anything else. Mostly, I’ve been doing odd jobs for him. Anything he asked me to do. After all, I owe him everything.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He's always with me. Do you want to see him?”

  “Yes. If it’s possible,” she said hesitantly.

  “Of course, when do you want to meet him?”

  “How about now?” she said holding her breath and flinching.

  “Fine.”

  Jaden snapped his fingers, and a fiendish man with a goatee and horns atop his head, wearing a long red flowing cape, appeared in a puff of smoke. He didn't look happy to meet Jaden’s parents.

  “Jaden said proudly, beaming from ear to ear, “Meet my guardian angel.” The foreboding stranger’s image fluctuated before them like a mirage.

  They recoiled in horror from Lucifer’s evil presence.

  “What's wrong, Dad? What's wrong, Mom? Why aren't you happy to meet my guardian angel? If not for him, I would be worm bait and six feet under now.”

  “Are you blind? Can't you see he's not your guardian angel? He's the devil.”

  “The devil!” Jaden shouted in anger. “What's wrong with you people? Aren't
you glad to see me?”

  “Not exactly, son. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?”

  Lucifer whispered in Jaden’s ear, “I have some pressing business I have to take care of. Tell your parents I’ll have to shoot the shit with them some other time.” He disappeared in another puff of smoke. A bolt of lightning thundered outside, and the wind sounded like hell had broken loose.

  “Now look what you’ve done. He felt the negative vibes, and he’s taken off.“

  “Where does he live?”

  “He hangs out in Limbo, Illinois. He operates a whorehouse, and an assisted living facility there. He's also into a little child pornography.”

  “Do you have any idea what you're saying, son?” Isabella groaned with disapproval. “Are you still as gullible as you were when you were alive?”

  “Mom, did you hear what I said? I owe my guardian angel everything. We made a deal, and now I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. Tomorrow morning I will resume my new life. Maybe I can get my old job back at the bowling alley. Or maybe I could try real estate.”

  “Do you remember when Joey Hoodwink traded you his Mickey Mantle rookie card for three thousand of your generic cards?”

  Jaden hung his head in shame. “Sure, Mom. I remember the rookie card was a reissue, not the original, and it was worth almost nothing. It even had a chunk out of the left corner. He really pulled the wool over my eyes on that one.”

  “Do you remember when Marty sold you the rubber python for fifty dollars?”

  “I remember. It sure looked real, but I had to move it manually to make it move.”

  “I'm afraid, your guardian angel… Enough of this guardian angel shit. What does he call himself in Limbo, Illinois?”

  “Everyone calls him, Harvey.”

  “Well, son. Harvey has tricked you just like Joey and Marty did. He knew you were an easy mark when he saw your lopsided head at the pearly gates, and he made away with your soul.”

  “I don't believe Harvey would ever mislead me. He's been like a father to me all these years.”