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

by Billy Wells

  “Not anymore,” Sam said sadly. “My wife left me after twenty-five years of marriage. I'm adjusting to that, too. How about you?”

  “I’m not married yet. I guess I never found that one girl I'm looking for, and I travel around a lot. It’s hard to have a relationship when you’re out of town so much.”

  Jerry looked across the pool at the three waterfalls, momentarily lost in thought. Then he said, sounding like an expert, “Marriage can be great with the right person or hell with the wrong one. Did you have children?”

  “Yeah. They live in California, and I rarely see them anymore. Enough of my boring life. What do you do when you’re not selling Fuller brushes?” Sam teased.

  “So far I've worked for seven different companies. I haven't stayed with any one of them more than three years.”

  “A real job hopper, huh?” Sam chided. “Does that catch up to you at some point?”

  “Not so far. I've never been laid off. I guess I’m good at what I do.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Actually, I've tried a variety of things. Real estate, life insurance, managing restaurant franchises, the military, but what I do now is my favorite.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by a series of quick lightning flashes in the foreboding sky over Disney, followed by loud claps of thunder.

  “Jerry started fidgeting with the towel in his lap and asked, “So what brings you to Orlando, business or pleasure?”

  “Pleasure.”

  “Do you play golf?”

  “No, I never got into it, but I always wanted to,” Sam said remorsefully.

  “Are you going to Disney?”

  “No. I've been there done that when the kids were growing up. In fact, we used to stay here at the Majestic every year when we came to visit the Parks. My son loved this pool. We'd go to the Parks in the morning and come to the pool in the afternoon.”

  “So you're just taking a little trip down memory lane?”

  “I guess you could say that. And what brings you to Orlando and the Majestic?”

  “I'm on an assignment. My boss wanted me to take care of some loose ends. One of his employees who worked for him for a long time parted company with him. He was worried about him running off the mouth about some very private matters.”

  Sam felt a pang of unease as Jerry’s friendly demeanor turned ice cold.

  “And what could you do if you did find him? I mean if he no longer works for your boss.”

  “I’d shut him up for good; it’s one of the things I’m good at. Of course I’d have to get him alone in a spot like this and take him out.”

  “So you're a hit man. And Benny sent you to whack me? The miserable creep.”

  “I guess we’re not going to dinner after all. I'm sorry, Sam, but you know too much. No one retires from the mob who knows where the money is like you do.”

  “Did Benny tell you what I did when I first started working for him when I was nineteen years old?”

  “No. Bennie was on vacation. He told Mort to hire me.”

  Sam only wore a Speedo, and he had a white pool towel in his lap. Jerry knew he wasn't packing a gun so he was totally at ease with the situation. He could kill him anytime he wanted. “So, what did you do for Bennie when you were nineteen?”

  “I was a knife thrower in my parents' circus act.” When Jerry saw the look in Sam's eyes, he went for his Luger concealed in a towel in his lap, but before his fingers even touched it, three small daggers had struck him in both eyes and the throat.

  The former bookkeeper of the mafia gang lord rose from his chair, removed the three daggers from the dead man's head, and returned them to their inconspicuous sheath in his pool shoes and walked away.

  Just before he reached the door to the back entrance of the hotel, it started to rain again. As he’d suspected, Benny would not let him retire and live, even though he considered him one of the dearest friends he’d ever had. In only a few days, he'd had Mort send one of his goons to take care of him, and he knew there would be others.

  When he reached his hotel suite on the top floor, he went directly to the mini-bar and poured three small bottles of vodka into a glass. He took it out on the balcony overlooking the enormous pool area like he had with his family so many times. He'd always loved staying at this hotel with his wife when his son was in middle school. Their vacations had been the happiest times of his life.

  Dr. McCabe had told him last week he’d be lucky to live ten more days. That's when he gave notice to Bennie. He didn’t tell his old friend he was dying, only that he’d decided to retire. He’d had enough of debits and credits with only ten days to live.

  He’d known no one retired from the gang once they knew as much is he did. But he hoped his relationship with Bennie would be strong enough to make a difference. Just in case, he’d gone to the pool area and sat alone to see if someone would come along.

  He’d didn’t expect Bennie would send a sniper. It wasn’t his style. He figured he would send a goon who would be up close and personal, and he was right. Sam hadn’t been worried. He never went anywhere without his knives since he learned to throw them.

  He took a long pull of vodka and looked down at the tables in the pool area thirty floors below where the man who came to kill him sat alone in the rain.

  He was feeling woozy as he finished his drink, climbed up on a chair, and then, transferred to the balcony railing.

  He was a great knife thrower, but he'd never been an acrobat like his father and mother. He'd always been afraid of heights as he teetered atop the railing. But it would only be for another second or two….

  CONVERTIBLE BANDITS

  Ralph grimaced and Lena groaned when the four lanes separated by a median became only two lanes. The occasional defunct motel or boarded up gas station had disappeared. Now they only saw weeds and standing water along the shoulder on both sides of the road.

  “You’ve done it again, Ralph. You've taken a shortcut off the main highway, and now we’re lost and low on gas.”

  “The guy at the convenience store said we could save forty minutes taking this shortcut,” Ralph explained.

  “But you may have taken the wrong road at the Y five-mile's back.”

  “He said go right at the Y.”

  “Are you sure?”

  They saw a small frame house badly in need of a coat of paint back from the road in the distance on the right with smoke curling from the chimney.

  “Hey, there's a house,” Ralph said, pointing into the woods up ahead. “If we run out of gas, I'll walk back here and use their phone to call AAA.”

  “If they own a phone. Remember we’re deep in the boonies.”

  “Well, people do live out here. We're not totally alone if something unexpected happens.”

  “That last sign said Nowhere, ten miles.” Lena said, staring dejectedly into the vast wilderness of endless forest that surrounded them. We must've driven twenty miles by now.”

  “I don't think so. The turn is probably right around this next bend.”

  “I hope so. We need gas, and I need to pee.” She squinted at the lone structure through the trees as they passed it “You know that house sure seems familiar.”

  “I think we passed one like it awhile back.”

  “No, Ralph. We didn’t pass one like this before, and I have a weird premonition I've been in that house.”

  “Have you suddenly become clairvoyant?”

  “No, but I can visualize the rooms inside.”

  “Come on. How can you say that?” Ralph teased. “You know it's impossible. Neither one of us has ever been in Texas before. And we're never going to be here again if I have anything to say about it.”

  “I don't know. I have a funny feeling we’ve been here before and we’ll be here again.”

  As they continued to drive further on the two-lane highway, instead of running into the four-lane they came to the end of the asphalt and a dead end with three huge boulders in the middle of the
road.

  “Whoa, Ralph! Now we know we’re going wrong.”

  Ralph scratched his head. It was cloudy and a few drops of rain splattered the windshield.

  He had very little room to turn around, but he negotiated it. The shoulder ran precipitously off on both sides of the road. They saw a valley below and a mountain stream.

  “I don't understand this. We never saw terrain like this on the way in. It's like we went through a portal in the Twilight Zone.”

  “Don't get creepy on me. Just keep your eyes on the road. We don't want to miss the turn this time. It must be hard to see for some reason.”

  In the distance standing at the edge of the road, they saw a hitchhiker with his thumb in the air. He wore a black sweat suit with a hood shrouding his face.

  “Where did he come from?” Lena asked with a dumbfounded look. “He wasn’t there a minute ago when we came by.”

  “Who knows, but we can ask him which way to go.”

  “Thank God. I was really worried something prehistoric might come stomping out of the underbrush.”

  When they reached the figure in black and pulled the car passed him on the right shoulder, they caught a glimpse of a white skull face inside the hood and did a double take. Turning back to get a better view of the nonsensical image they thought they had seen, the figure was gone.

  “What the hell?” Ralph gasped backing up a few car lengths. “Where did he go?”

  “Something’s not right here,” Lena said. “Did you see what I just saw?”

  “I don't know what you saw, but I saw a skeleton in a black sweat suit trying to thumb a ride, and then he disappeared into thin air.”

  “Then I'm not going crazy,” Lena said. “That's what I saw.”

  Ralph stopped the car, and they both got out. By the side of the road, they saw four weather-beaten small crosses almost covered with weeds. Someone had placed a gray board against a small pile of rocks for a headstone. The words on it were barely visible. Two Families Crashed At The Y-1959. No One Knows Why.

  Then they noticed another arm of the Y meeting the one they were on.

  “When we came by here the first time, I didn't see these crosses, Ralph.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “Where did the hitchhiker go?”

  “He must've darted into the bushes when we passed him.”

  “How could he do that without us seeing him?” Lena said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “I don't know. Maybe he dove on the ground in the weeds and crawled away.”

  “Why was he wearing a mask?”

  “You ask too many questions I can’t answer,” Ralph replied, peering into the dense forest surrounding them.

  “The flowers on the grave are fairly new. Maybe the people in that house we saw placed them here. There's no one else around for miles.”

  “Are we having some kind of nightmare? This can't be happening.”

  “I must be having the same nightmare,” Lena said biting her fingernail to the quick. “I'm seeing what you're seeing, and it’s really fucked up.”

  “Let's go to the house we saw. Maybe someone there can tell us what happened here.”

  They returned to their 1958 Skylark convertible and drove back to the frame house, following the gravel driveway about one hundred feet from the road to the house.

  In the carport to the right, they saw a sleek futuristic automobile. The design was unlike anything they had ever seen before.

  “What kind of car is that?” Ralph asked, searching his memory bank for a clue. “It's so small, there's no room to make out in the backseat when you go to a drive-in. And what's happened to the chrome and the wide whitewall tires? And look at the shitty hood ornament. This must really be a stripped down model.”

  “Have you ever heard of a Toyota Lexus?”

  “No. It must be a new import, maybe Japanese. Who would buy a car like that? It probably cost a fortune to repair.”

  “Enough of this nonsense about the car.” Lena climbed the three steps up to the porch and knocked on the front door.

  Ralph noticed a newspaper lying on the porch swing. He’d never seen a newspaper so thin, and he noticed it cost $.50. What was the world coming to? His eyes bugged out when he saw the date August 3, 2014.

  “Hey, Lena, look at this.” Lena turned from the door and joined Ralph at the swing. He pointed to the date on the newspaper. She gasped.

  A middle-aged woman suddenly opened the front door, took out a key, and locked it.

  “Excuse me, ma'am,” Lena said. “We're lost. Can you tell me where the closest gas station is?”

  The woman looked their way, tried to remember if she’d forgotten something, and headed in the direction of the carport.

  “Excuse me ma'am,” Lena said almost shouting, but the woman ignored her, walked past the carport, and disappeared around the corner of the house.

  Shortly afterward, they heard the roar of an engine start up. In a few moments, the woman reappeared driving a huge bulldozer with an elongated steel blade instead of the normal bucket. She goosed the accelerator and sped into the driveway leading to the highway. Just before reaching the asphalt, she backed behind a huge hedge so no one could see her from the road.

  “What was wrong with her?” Ralph asked totally perplexed. “Was she deaf?“

  “I don't think so. And if she’s driving a bulldozer, she's not blind. And for some reason, she didn't see us.”

  “What the fuck is happening? Everything is weird. Maybe we did just step into the Twilight Zone.”

  They crept closer under cover of the trees to see what the woman was up to. In the distance, they heard an automobile approaching from the left. Suddenly the dozer roared to life and accelerated diagonally into the road. They watched in horror as the steel blade struck the speeding convertible just above the wipers on the passenger-side and tore through the windshield like a knife through butter shaving off the top in one motion. The small yellow car drifted out of control across the road, then, it struck several enormous boulders head on. The hood folded up like an accordion and steam poured out.

  Ralph and Lena crept closer for a better view and peeked through the underbrush behind the sign. The woman jumped down from her seat atop the dozer with a rifle dangling by her side. As she strode toward the wreckage, the decapitated driver lurched back and forth like a chicken with his head cut off, blood spurting from the gaping hole in his neck.

  The passenger side door, already partially open and hanging askew, abruptly flew wide open, and a female slid out onto the asphalt. Blood spewed from the empty socket of her missing arm as she cried out pitifully, “Help me! Please!”

  A bullet to the head from the rifle of the dozer’s driver answered her pleas. The killer’s face remained expressionless as she dragged the woman she had just killed back to the open door and lifted her inside like a sack of potatoes. She went to the other side, picked up the driver’s head from the ground, and pitched it into the backseat like a large cantaloupe.

  Not skipping a beat, she returned to the dozer, backed it closer to the wreckage, and pulling a chain from the rigging, attached it to the undercarriage and hoisted up the front end. Ralph and Lena watched in awe as she towed the yellow Kia into the woods behind her house. Afterward, the woman returned to the porch, unlocked the door, and went inside for a few minutes.

  Ralph and Lena waited, and finally the stone cold killer came out and took a seat on the porch with a can of beer and a bag full of something called Doritos. While she read the newspaper and had her snack, Ralph and Lena sneaked around back to take a look.

  A graveyard of decapitated convertibles all stripped of everything salable for junk littered the property as far as they could see. Toward the back, they recognized the license plate on their mutilated 1958 Skylark convertible.

  Ralph whispered to Lena as they peered at the woman through a stand of bushes, “She’s been killing people for over fifty years.”

  “That's impossible. She's
not that old. She must be a second or third generation killer.”

  “In all those years, you would think someone would stumble upon the auto graveyard and blow the whistle by now.”

  “Remember, Ralph, this road isn't on the map, and it’s a dead end that doesn't lead anywhere. The man at the convenience store must be in on it.”

  “That old geezer. That's incredible. He didn't look like a psychopath to me.”

  “Did you see the way that woman shot the poor lady in the head. She didn't show the slightest bit of emotion. She is a stone cold killer and the convenience store guy must be just like her.”

  Ralph winced. “I guess buying that convertible wasn't such a great idea after all. That's what they’re targeting with their death machine.”

  Lena started to cry. “You don’t need to whisper, Ralph, the psycho bitch can’t hear or see us anyway. We’re dead.”

  “So we must be ….”

  “Ghosts, Ralph. That’s why the woman didn’t see us. And there's one more thing you’ve forgotten. It's 2014. You saw the old geezer over fifty years ago. The couple these maniacs slaughtered was living right now. You saw the yellow car they driving. It didn't look anything like our ‘58 Skylark.”

  “They killed us on August 3 1959, and this is the anniversary of our deaths. We're haunting this place today for some reason.”

  Lena pressed in on her chest, felt her arm, and said, “I don't feel like a ghost. Let's try something. Follow me.”

  She saw patio doors leading into the basement from the back yard. With Ralph tagging along, she walked up to the back door and announced, “Here goes.” She proceeded to walk right through the wall and didn't feel a thing. Ralph closed his eyes and followed close behind. They descended the basement stairs. The only light was a nightlight plugged into a receptacle on the wall, but somehow, they could see in the dark better than when they were alive.

  Immediately they recognized the basement was a torture chamber. They saw two metal tables with leather straps positioned where a person’s arms and legs would be and an enormous vice big enough for a head to fit in.

  They saw rows of shackles hanging from the ceiling and a table filled with scalpels, drills, saws, and other tools.