Dark: A Horror Anthology

by Steve Wands

  A slimy sucking sound interrupted Marc. A splotched green-and-brown arm shot between the driver’s and passenger’s seat. If the window hadn’t already been broken out, the policeman would have slammed his head against the glass as he jumped in surprise. Marc twisted and saw the undead clawing its way up from the floor between the front and back seats. It had been younger – a pre-teen girl – in life, and its hungry eyes stared into him. The girl’s t-shirt was splattered with dripping mud and several maggoty worms clung to one of her armpits. Her face twisted in what looked like a combination of desire, pain and rage.

  “Get her off me! Get it off me!”

  The girl’s eyes were on Marc, but its arms and searching fingers had found the policeman. Her right hand snaked its way around his seat and her crusty fingernails were tearing at the bite wound in his cheek. He tried to turn way from her, and lunged forward. He jerked, and into Marc’s raising arm, knocking the Beretta away and to the floor.

  The girl-thing hurked over the seat, crawling toward the two men. The policeman writhed and coiled away from her as best he could. Marc reached out and tried to move her head away from the two of them, lifting her face (careful to keep his fingers away from her teeth) to the roof. He pushed until a wet vegetable-cracking sound vibrated through her neck as Marc cracked dead vertebrate with a shove.

  Her body spasmed, but her weight kept coming after the policeman. Marc reached to the wet floorboards, his fingers searching for his gun. The tips of his index and middle finger skimmed the grip of it. He would have to release his hold on the girl’s head to reach it. Cold drool dribbled down her cheek and iced itself down Marc’s arm and into his coat sleeve. He shoved her away and bent to retrieve the weapon.

  As he brought it to bear, the policeman shifted the car from, ‘Park,’ to, ‘Drive.’

  The dying man stomped on the accelerator. Wet tires took hold, heaving the policeman’s car across the asphalt. The dead girl slipped into the back seat, taking a few fresh inches of the policeman’s face under her fingernails. He screamed while Marc tried to take aim, but the policeman jerked the steering wheel and all three bodies lunged to the side.

  The vehicle slid around the parking lot, narrowly missing one of the other cars. Through the diffusing rain, Marc watched his car speed by as well. The policeman was still accelerating, but he was avoiding the other vehicles in the lot, leaving them behind.

  The girl flung herself between the two front seats. Her right arm flipped across Marc’s shoulder, knocking back his Beretta and sending a burst of collected rainwater flying from his jacket. Her loosely-held head landed on the policeman’s thigh. With a wet gurgle, she/it opened her jaw as wide as she could and started tearing through his pants with her teeth. Her left arm pushed at his face.

  The policeman’s screams turned to sobs until some of her teeth found their way through to his flesh, then he screamed again. Marc tightened the grip on his handgun and slammed the barrel against the girl’s skull, but he couldn’t find an angle that wouldn’t send the bullet through its dead head but into the policeman’s groin as well.

  The policeman stopped turning the wheel. Marc looked up to see him opening his mouth wide, bearing his teeth as the screaming drifted into breathy laughter. He held the wheel steady; rain splattered in through his broken window. The girl continued to chew on his leg.

  Marc cast a quick glance through the windshield. The speeding car was pointed at the dumpster.

  “What are you—” The question died before it left his lips. As the policeman’s eyes grew wider and tears leaked down his cheeks, Marc pushed the girl’s arm away from him and turned to reach for his door handle. His damp fingers slid against the chrome-plated lever, but he eventually found purchase and, snagging a fingernail, managed to pop it open.

  The car continued to race toward the dumpster. Marc cast one last look at the terrified policeman before shoving the door open and spilling himself out on the asphalt.

  His body rolled in a controlled crumple, coming to a stop in time for Marc to watch the policeman’s car hurtle into the dumpster. Metal squealed and tires spun. Through the misted light, Marc could barely see the policeman convulsing in the driver’s seat. The rear wheels kept pushing the car into the metal dumpster. Rain mixed with the rapidly spilling dark fluids coming from the car’s undercarriage. Above the noise and the rain, Marc could hear the screaming laughter from the victim of his client’s mistake. The laughter died beneath a whooshing sound as something sparked and caught fire. The pooling liquid around the crashed car lit with light blue flame. Marc threw a hand up to cover his eyes as the car burst into fire. A quick gush of heat flicked over him.

  Marc slowly came to his feet, noting a stiff pain in his left leg and ankle. He limped to his own car while wiping the Beretta off as much as he could on his pants. He tossed the weapon inside before easing himself into the car. The seat was soaked and oozed rainwater as he let his weight settle into it.

  The blazing police car and dumpster proved to be a greater force than the rain and licked the night air with feathers of flame. Marc pulled his car door closed and exhaled. The engine was still running. The heater was still on, and it was warm.

  The phone rang. Marc stared at his cell phone for a moment before grabbing, his eyes focusing on it. He picked it up and held it to his face.

  “Yeah.”

  The nasal voice on the other end sounded surprised. “Mr. Temple?”

  “Yeah.”

  Marc could hear the man breathing obnoxiously loud. “I thought…I was expecting – ”

  “What do you want, Arthur?”

  “Did the police…? I mean, I called the police.”

  Marc slid his car into gear. He rolled down his window as the car inched toward the burning police car. “I know you did, Arthur. I got your message.”

  “Oh. Right.” He paused and breathed into the phone. “Did they get in the way?”

  Marc steered the car away from the fire, passing it on his left. He peered into the flames as best he could, squinting. No movement.

  “Your police friend’s dead now, Arthur, but no, he didn’t really get in the way.”

  Before waiting for his client’s response, Marc tossed the cell phone out the window and into the fire before driving off.

  *

  Palmistry

  by J. P. Moore

  The only piece to seem out of place was the man himself, the denizen Cairo. Rich mahogany panels and expensive scarlet curtains wrapped the round room in an air that was quite at odds with his own. He was understated amidst Victorian London’s most exotic possessions, gifts given to him as gratuities over his fees. Cairo wore a tasteful scarlet jacket, but no tie. A middle-aged man who seemed unwilling to fuss over his aging frame, Cairo was modest until he billed.

  He was almost justified in charging more for the atmosphere. Four windows overlooked gas lamps, stray dogs and children late to bed and hurrying, frightened still by Jack the Ripper though he had been dead for decades. By nine o’clock a mist had often risen from the sidewalk. It was a ghost of dust kicked up by the day’s traffic. At night, only occasional hoof beats clop-clapped on the wet cobblestones. This and all sounds were as harsh and sharp as light reflected from glass into one’s eyes.

  The energy in his upstairs chambers seemed frantic but controlled. Books littered chairs, a large round table that rose during séances and was not even rigged, and end tables everywhere. Cairo’s library was valuable, full of volumes that had been almost impossible to secure. Bookcases filled in between the windows, but the shelves were reserved more for relics. These idols and amulets, along with the manuscripts and tomes had all been bought by the rich of Europe who, between their appointments with Cairo, traveled their far-flung empires and thought of him when chancing upon some primitive trinket or odd bit of Templar magic. Cairo’s couriers and scavengers were Earls and Ladies, Dukes and even Lord Carnarvon, who mounted entire archaeological expeditions just to appease the man who read their palms.
<
br />   Cairo cradled a skull in his lap, rolled it around and placed it in the center of the table. Lord Carnarvon had left the skull days before and asked Cairo to develop as detailed a report as possible. The Lord offered a dousing rod from a countryside Celtic barrow in addition to the normal fee. Rumor was that the skull had been perched atop the shoulders of a notorious Xhosa chief caught and decapitated by the Queen’s regulars in South Africa. Its value would have been insured, of course, if Cairo were able to prove it to be that skull. And even though Cairo was not a phrenologist—he was skeptical of the objectivity of reading bumps on one’s head—he was considered London’s foremost metaphysical authority.

  The thick skull of a chieftain was a tough item to read and would have posed a challenge even to a dedicated and qualified phrenologist, of which there were very few in London. Some of the average head’s bumps and furrows are of skin, of which Chief Hintsa had parchment flakes. And the fate was already certain. The man, Hintsa or not, had been decapitated. This made Cairo uncomfortable with the subjectivity of his report. But he felt guilty. There was a mysterious death running in the deep lines of Carnarvon’s hand that Cairo could not bring himself to reveal. He wondered if his silence were borne upon selfishness, for Carnarvon was one of Cairo’s greatest sources of artifacts.

  Cairo put more stock into his verdict on Carnarvon than he would have on any of his phrenology reports. Palmistry made perfect sense to Cairo. Scientist’s had proven that the body’s energies were heightened around the hands. Furthermore, empirically sound studies supported the notion that these energies shaped the hand. Lines, after all, had never been observed on a human hand until well into gestation. The data also suggested that men of similar destinies had similar hands.

  Cairo moved to sit before a mirror, the skull landing again in his lap. He ran his hands through his own hair. Bumps on the head. Which are of bone? He knocked and heard it dull in his ears. He felt through his hair while feeling the skull. There were the phrenologist’s landmarks. Seat of affection. Seat of caution. Seat of destructiveness. Cairo took up a hand mirror and angled it into the reflection in front of him. There was a bald spot, growing larger and larger. It was smooth and shiny, speckled. Seat of veneration. Hintsa had a bump there, quite proper for a chief. Cairo continued the exploration, down around his own temples and round cheeks. His second chin rolled well out of the phrenologist’s landscape.

  A commotion rose from the street. Carriages and horses — someone of importance had arrived. People began to fill the empty downstairs parlor. Zeno had gone home hours earlier, leaving his appointment and invoice books unmanned. There were never casual, curious clients this late in the night and nothing formal had been scheduled for this evening, despite the profitable atmosphere London offered with its mist and moon.

  Cairo placed the skull in front of the mirror. The empty sockets peered into themselves, disrupting Cairo’s calm. He turned the skull and moved to the window. A large entourage surrounded six ostentatious carriages. The trim of a blue cape fluttered into the doorway. The coachman lit his pipe and a milk white feminine forearm rested below the carriage’s side window. Cairo straightened his clothes and brushed the grit of Hintsa from his lap.

  The best pose for gentry had proven to be that of sitting in the red chair, facing the doorway, gazing out with the head pitched downward, hands as if in prayer touching the chin at the index fingers. A comfortable chair sat to the right to beckon the distinguished visitor. Once seated, Cairo and client could converse across a round table that was of perfect height for examination of the palms.

  Cairo could hear them gathering downstairs. He was represented in the parlor by Zeno’s appointment book, which always sat in silent efficiency with a ragged red ribbon flowing from between the pages. A lamp stood beside it, turned off. There were not enough chairs and some of the guests must have looked about, wondering if they should sit. Perhaps they knew better and offered the seat to their lord or duke or whatever nobility he was.

  An angry burst of a foreign language, a rough Eastern European language. Then, in accented English: “I am coming up.”

  Heavy footsteps shook ceramics on the bookcase near the stairs. Thump, chin-chink. Thump, chin-chink. Cairo broke his pose, stretched and then composed himself.

  The words, the accent—it was Russian. Tsar Nicholas II stood then in the doorway. Cairo recognized him. His wedding had been the event of the decade. Not yet thirty and so decorated, cloaked in sky blues and golds, the Tsar wore a grin that turned his mustache up at the corners. Medals piled upon his chest as if honors had been invented in hordes just for this one man.

  “Such drama,” the Tsar said.

  Cairo’s pose fell and he failed to hide his surprise. He managed an invitation toward the chair, and then scrambled to clear an aged, open book from its seat. He fumbled with this as bits of powdery paper dropped like ash.

  Nicholas placed his hands on his hips.

  “My wife should have come up for this,” he said. “She might appreciate it.” He gestured to the whole room. “Were you not referred to by kind Lord Carnarvon as a scientist, I would not be here.” He moved to the table, examined a book and flipped a page. “Will-o’-the-wisps, Faeries and Leprechauns. This is not science, Mr. Cairo. I was kept waiting for this.”

  Cairo adopted a more conservative pose. He sat, crossed his legs and let his hands fall to the arms of the chair.

  “Please sit.”

  Nicholas did.

  “There is no magic in Russia, Mr. Cairo.”

  “I am, as you say, a scientist.”

  “And the leprechauns?”

  “Unexplained phenomena. To a scientist.”

  “Were I king of your islands, Mr. Cairo, I would forbid magic. Farmers in Russia do not fear strange beasts and lights in the sky. Edicts put an end to magic, and farmers work.”

  “What do they fear?” Cairo asked, recovering his airs.

  “Poor crops. Bad winters.”

  “The future?”

  “Yes. And also my police.”

  A servant peered through the doorway, his head craning sideways. Cairo raised an eyebrow and Nicholas turned. The Tsar bellowed. It was a good language for commands. The servant withdrew.

  “My fate,” Nicholas said, “may disturb them. They shall wait in the carriages and I shall lie.”

  Cairo smiled.

  *

  “Carnarvon recommended me?”

  “He did.”

  The Tsar’s blotchy hand was laid out flat. Blood fled and pooled.

  “He meets with me every week,” Cairo said. “Still a very young man, in many ways. His chauffeur insists that he prepare by clapping for twenty minutes. He claims to have read that.” He took up a magnifying glass. “I can picture the man giggling himself to death while Carnarvon claps and claps in the carriage.”

  The Tsar laughed. He was drinking a fine brandy that Cairo reserved for formidable guests.

  “Funny thing is,” Cairo said, “that I believe it helps the reading. Your hand, for instance, is like most.”

  “I would hope not.”

  “Blood is forced out of some tissues and collects in these fleshy mounds. Is this mood, which would be significant, or the fact that you are stretching it all out and I am pushing it all around? Or is it the brandy? It is distracting. Carnarvon’s hand is as red as a beet all over. Somehow, that is easier.”

  Cairo examined the skin and the Tsar sighed.

  “What does it all say?” Nicholas asked.

  “I am not done.”

  “What are your impressions?”

  “Luck plays a large part in your life. Some bad luck.”

  The Tsar frowned.

  “What else?” he asked.

  “You have strayed from your destiny. Show me your other hand. Look. You can see the differences clearly.”

  “I was born to be Tsar.”

  “Yes. But there are clear differences between your hands. This hand is your destiny. This one is what yo
u have made of yourself.”

  So these, Cairo thought, are the hands of majesty. These are the palms of old sick man empire, palms and fingers with translucent skin at too young an age. The man was like jelly, with soft palms that had not performed an hour of work. The mounts were low and the lines shallow. He was not an exceptional man. Perhaps he was not born to be Tsar. There was plenty of fortune in his palms, but perhaps his left hand, his favored hand, would show that he enjoyed more than was planned for him.

  “You have been Tsar for two years,” Cairo said.

  “You could have read that somewhere.”

  “I did. How old are you?”

  Nicholas did not answer. Cairo looked up from the Tsar’s hands.

  “I am thinking,” Nicholas says. “I am twenty-eight.”

  “You have not been married to the Tsarina for long.”

  “Two years.”

  “Ah, yes,” Cairo said. “I remember. The marriage and then the coronation. You will have children. Several. Male and female.”

  Cairo refrained from mentioning that the heir would be sickly.

  “Glorious,” the Tsar cried. “The Tsarina will be delighted.”

  “But I am concerned. The differences between your hands are alarming.”

  “A word your clients do not like to hear, I imagine.”

  Cairo smiled.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “How long are you in London?”

  “Several days. We are not certain.”

  Cairo leaned back. Nicholas looked much older in this light. It was the pressures of his post, no doubt. Cairo returned to the hands. The favored hand showed what a man had made of himself. The lesser hand showed what had been planned from birth. It would have taken an uncommon man to stray so far from his fate, to have so many differences that he would appear to possess the hands of two different men. It would have taken an uncommon man, an emperor. Perhaps that was all there was to it.

  “What are you thinking?” the Tsar asked. He was concerned. The brandy may have been getting to him. Perhaps his wife had put him up to this and he was curious. The brandy always worked to make friends of these skeptics, but the Tsar appeared nervous. His horses knew it. They whinnied and huffed below the window.