Razorblade Dreams: Horror Stories

by Mark Lukens

  I had nowhere to run to. I checked the windows, and there were zombies as far as I could see. There were thousands of them. I tried the phone, but it didn’t work. My cell phone had never worked way out here. I stumbled over to the couch and opened up my laptop just to have a source of light.

  And then I started typing. Because that’s what this house wanted all along, it wanted me to write and write, and bring more of them to life.

  My fingers race across the keys now as I type this. The front door has finally given way, crashing to the floor under the weight of the zombies. They’ve fallen into the house in a heap of writhing dead flesh, biting and tearing at each other to free themselves from their tangled mass. Some are getting back to their feet, and they’ve spotted me here in the corner.

  The killer has already come downstairs, dragging his ax behind him. The ax blade plopped down each step on the way down.

  The white creature finally crashed through the doorway upstairs and is now hurtling itself down the steps, crushing them on the way down. All of my creations are about to collide with each other on their way to me. But it doesn’t matter which of them gets to me first.

  I don’t want to look at them. I don’t want to.

  There are sounds in the walls right behind me. I hear rats. They are the rats I dreamed up in my story House Infection. They are chewing through the walls right now, and I can hear their squeaks and squeals as they squeeze their wet and hairy bodies through the small holes they’ve chewed through the walls.

  The monsters are coming towards me from all sides now. A few seconds ago a large ripple undulated through the floor underneath me. There’s something big in the basement, pushing up against the floorboards, and I have an idea of what it might be. But I don’t want to think about it.

  This is the end. I can hear the madman whispering right beside me as he raises his ax up. I hear the rats, and I can feel them clawing and biting at my feet and legs. The undead moan and gurgle as they fall down on top of me.

  Tell my sister I love her.

  Oh God forgive me for what I’ve brought into the world. Forgive me for ev

  From a New York Times article:

  Well-known author Evan Sommers was found dead in his rental home near Carston, Vermont. After not hearing from him for a month, his sister, Lynn, called the authorities. Sources are saying the author died of an apparent heart attack, but they’re not ruling anything out until an autopsy is performed.

  “He died while writing,” Evan’s sister commented. “He died doing what he loved.”

  Evan Sommers was best known for works such as HOUSE INFECTION, THE BONEYARD MURDERS, and WHEN HELL RISES.

  He was forty-one years old.

  The Bedroom Light was a story I wrote in my late teens, back when I was heavily influenced by Stephen King and Dean Koontz (not that I’m not still heavily influenced by those great authors). I wanted to write a monster story where the craziest monsters came at this guy all at once. But in the rewrite I made it more of creations from his stories coming to life, and I like this version much better.

  RAZORBLADE DREAMS

  Cassie sat up in the darkness of her bedroom. She’d had the nightmare again. Her heart was hammering in her chest. Her skin felt clammy and tingly at the same time. She felt shaky, panicky, like she needed to run, like some devastation was imminent.

  She looked at her alarm clock, the red digital numbers seeming to float in the darkness. She still had an hour and a half before she had to get up for work. Instead of rolling over and trying to go back to sleep, she turned on the lamp next to her bed. She took a sip of water from the bottle next to the lamp, but it barely seemed to quench her thirst.

  Gotta get up, she told herself. Gotta get up and move around for a minute.

  Getting out of bed disturbed her cat—she jumped off the foot of the bed, the soft thud of her paws hitting the laminate flooring. The nearly all-black cat darted out of the bedroom and seemed to dissolve into the darkness beyond her open bedroom door.

  Cassie stared at her half-open door. She’d never been afraid of the dark before, but something felt wrong right now.

  “It’s just a dream,” she whispered to herself. But she really didn’t like the trembling sound of her voice right now.

  It felt like there was something in another part of her home . . . someone waiting for her in that darkness.

  “Stop it,” she hissed at herself. Both of her cats were in the house somewhere. If there was someone in the house then those cats would’ve darted right back in here and hid. There was no one lurking in her house—she needed to be rational about this. It was just a nightmare, just a dream that had freaked her out.

  After another swig of water, Cassie went into the bathroom off of her bedroom. She turned on the light and splashed her face with water. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. She couldn’t get rid of the creepy-crawly sensation on her skin. She tried to remember the nightmare, but only bits and pieces were coming back to her. She thought she’d been in a car with someone in the dream . . . she thought there might have been a child in the back seat. They’d been driving somewhere . . . but they were lost. The little girl in the back seat was getting agitated . . . maybe she was scared.

  Cassie couldn’t remember who was in the passenger seat—that person was just a blank right now.

  She left the bathroom and went out to the kitchen, turning lights on along the way. She still felt a little shaky from the dream. Maybe something else besides water would help, maybe some tea. It did have caffeine, which was probably counterproductive to going back to sleep, but a cup of tea sounded good right now; it sounded relaxing. She figured she was probably going to be awake until morning anyhow.

  As she filled a pot with water, a memory of the dream hit her with such a sudden force it felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. There’d been a man in the dream, and he’d been dressed in black from head to toe. He’d even had a mask on, some kind of hood over his head. He’d been standing in a crowd of people because . . . because they had stopped their car . . . but why had they stopped? Maybe they had stopped to ask for directions. But they’d gotten out of the car at some point and were in that crowd, and that man dressed all in black was in that crowd, staring right at her.

  God, it gave her chills just thinking about it.

  Cassie jumped as something bumped her bare calf, and she almost let out a scream.

  Her cat bolted out of the kitchen . . . it had been her cat rubbing up against her leg, wanting her to open the sliding back door so she could go out onto the screened-in back porch.

  “Sorry, Slinky,” Cassie said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Slinky waited by the sliding glass door hidden behind a curtain of vertical blinds, but Cassie wasn’t going to open that door right now. No way. She was still too freaked out about the dream even though she still wasn’t sure what had scared her so badly. The guy dressed in black with the mask? Maybe, but she couldn’t remember the man doing anything other than staring at her through the crowd. Maybe there were other parts of the dream that she wasn’t remembering.

  After turning the stove on for the pot of water, Cassie went into the living room and turned the TV on. She needed some more light and background noise right now. She flipped to a twenty-four hour business news channel and let it drone on in the background. Futures and Asian markets were streaming along the bottom of the screen. She glanced at some of the share prices, and then went back to the kitchen. The news was getting her mind off of her dreams, the nightmare finally beginning to fade away completely. Her thoughts turned to the day ahead of her. She’d worked in finance for years. Maybe it was boring to most people, but she found numbers, economics, and stocks fascinating. Numbers were reliable, they were dependable. Two plus two was always going to equal four—from here to the other side of the galaxy. Yes, numbers could be counted on (excuse the pun, she told herself), not like people who always let you down. Her ex-husband was one of those people who would le
t you down. Many in her family were those kinds of people. So were a lot of her co-workers. She couldn’t really call her coworkers friends because she didn’t have anyone she could call a true friend; she had some girls she spent time with on holidays or took an occasional shopping trip with, or had a drink or two with (Cassie was not much of a drinker), but not a best friend, not someone she could whole-heartedly trust. The closest person she could call a close friend would be Zoe at work.

  “I’m not opening the door for you until the sun comes up,” Cassie told Slinky who still waited patiently by the vertical blinds. Well, patiently for now. Soon she would start pacing and meowing, and then start spazzing, racing back and forth and crashing into the blinds, throwing a feline temper tantrum.

  Cassie walked into the living room again and checked the sliding glass door to make sure it was locked, moving the blinds and perhaps teasing Slinky. She went to the formal living room, and then the foyer to check the front door.

  This was ridiculous. Of course the doors were all locked; she never forgot to lock her doors at night.

  What was wrong with her? She didn’t usually react to nightmares like this. Actually, up until a few weeks ago, she couldn’t remember having had any bad dreams since she was a kid. She hadn’t even remembered many of her dreams over the last few years. She wondered if she even dreamt at all, or maybe she just dreamed about work: numbers, stock prices, PE ratios, financial reports.

  The water on the stove was boiling. She added three tea bags and let it boil for a minute longer. She checked her cell phone and found the usual high number of email alerts . . . and a missed call.

  A missed call? Sometime during the night?

  She checked the phone number, but there was no number, just the word: RESTRICTED. She checked to see when the call had come. Around four thirty this morning—only an hour ago. That was strange; she hadn’t heard the phone ring. Even though her phone was out here in the kitchen, she was sure she would’ve heard it ring. But the call must’ve come while she’d been having the nightmare. Maybe the ringing of the phone had actually awakened her.

  She checked to see if the caller had left a message.

  There was a message.

  She jabbed the messenger bar with a swipe of her finger, and the message began playing. She touched the microphone button so she could hear it without holding it up to her ear. There was silence, then a slight static as the little bar at the bottom of the screen moved along slowly. For a second she thought the person who’d left the message wasn’t going to say anything, perhaps realizing they’d called the wrong number at four thirty in the morning. But then a man’s raspy voice spoke, and he only said three words. But those three words chilled her to the bone. “Sweet dreams tonight?”

  Cassie turned around and looked behind her, suddenly afraid that someone was in her house.

  No one there, but that tingly sensation was back again, dancing along her skin. And that panicky/shaky feeling was back, that feeling that made her want to run.

  Cassie turned on more lights. She turned the TV up a little louder. She went back to her phone and played the message again. And then again and again.

  “Just a prank,” she told herself after listening to the message five times.

  The tea in the pot had been boiling for several minutes now. She turned the burner off and poured the tea into the pitcher with a cup of sugar.

  It was just a coincidence, she told herself. But as a number cruncher, she didn’t believe in coincidences. She’d had a nightmare about some strange man dressed all in black and wearing a mask, and then someone had called her while she’d been dreaming and left a message asking if she’d had sweet dreams tonight.

  A sudden anger rose inside of her. Prank call or not, she wasn’t going to let this go. She would call this man back, that’s what she’d do. But then she remembered that the man had called her from a restricted number—her phone wasn’t going to let her dial him back.

  *

  Work dragged by for Cassie. She was tired, but once she got to her desk and started meeting with clients, she delved into her world of finance, helping people with more money than she would ever earn make even more money.

  “You wanna do lunch today?” Zoe asked.

  Cassie looked up at Zoe as she stood next to her desk. “I brought my lunch today,” Cassie told her, and then frowned. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Zoe said, smiling. Zoe was always smiling, always cheerful. She wore bright colors, a contrast to most of the others in the office who wore drab grays, browns, blacks . . . Cassie included. Zoe also wore a lot of jewelry that was always clinking and jingling. Tattoos peeked out of the open collar of her shirt and out of the cuffs of her sleeves. Even though Zoe didn’t seem like the prototypical financial advisor, she was great at her job, and she had an almost supernatural ability to predict the markets. Speaking of supernatural, Zoe believed in all things supernatural, and she wasn’t afraid to tell anyone. She claimed she had gotten her abilities from her grandmother who’d been a psychic and taught Zoe the mystical side of things.

  “You okay?” Zoe asked.

  “Yeah,” Cassie answered immediately, lighting up with her customer-friendly smile. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  That wasn’t true, Cassie thought. Zoe knew something—she could tell something was wrong.

  “I just didn’t get enough sleep last night,” Cassie finally admitted.

  Zoe stared at Cassie for a moment longer, like she knew there was more to the story than that. But when Cassie didn’t volunteer any more information, Zoe smiled and left.

  *

  Cassie came home and started some dinner. She felt a little better now after working all day, but she also felt more tired than usual.

  After dinner she called her mother and talked to her for twenty minutes, listening to her mother’s complaints and criticisms, and the always thinly-veiled suggestions that Cassie go out and try to meet some guy. Cassie’s mother wanted grandchildren before she keeled over, you know.

  Cassie reminded her mother that she already had grandchildren—Cassie’s sister Christine had three children.

  “I want some grandchildren from you,” her mother said.

  After cleaning the kitchen and putting the dishes away, Cassie went to her bedroom and turned the TV on. She didn’t usually watch TV in her bedroom, but she thought she would do so tonight. She also ran a hot bath. After relaxing in the bath for thirty minutes, Cassie dressed in some comfortable pajamas and stretched out under the bedsheets, watching some old movie on Turner Classics. Both of her cats were curled up at the end of her bed.

  She had almost drifted off to sleep when she heard a noise from the kitchen. She sat up, staring at her half-open bedroom door. She looked at the foot of her bed and noticed that both of her cats were gone. When had they left the bed? Maybe she had drifted off for a moment. The noise in the kitchen was probably the cats playing around with each other.

  She heard the noise from the kitchen again . . . it sounded like someone was walking around out there, and that someone was not trying to be quiet about it. She sat there for a moment, listening. Her heart began pounding, and that buzzing/tingling feeling was back on her skin. She went to grab her cell phone on the end table next to her bed, but it wasn’t there. Where was her cell phone? She thought she’d brought it into the bedroom with her, but maybe she’d left it in the kitchen like she usually did. At least the cordless phone was on the table, and she grabbed it, ready to dial 911 if she needed to.

  Quietly, she got out of bed and crept to her bedroom door, still listening the entire time. The noises were still coming from the kitchen. It almost sounded like someone was moving pots and pans around, and utensils . . . like someone was cooking.

  She stepped out into the living room and saw a light on in the kitchen, and she knew she hadn’t left the lights on in there. A wall at the other side of the living room blocked a lot of the view of the kitchen from where she stood—she did
n’t see anyone there, but she could still hear the noises.

  For some strange reason she wondered if her mother was in the kitchen. Her mother had a key to the house; maybe she had come over to fix something. But no, that didn’t seem right.

  Cassie heard a voice from the kitchen . . . a male voice humming some kind of song. The large flat screen TV in the family room beyond the kitchen was on. She could see the glow from it, hear the babbling voices coming from it, the words incoherent.

  A man was in her home. Maybe it was the same man who’d called her cell phone last night and left that strange message. She was going to call the police right now. She was about to dial 911 when the cordless phone rang in her hand.

  She stifled a scream, nearly dropping the phone. The little screen on the cordless phone lit up in an eerie green light as it rang—she saw the number on the screen: it was her own cell phone number. She raised the phone up to her ear and pressed the TALK button. She didn’t say anything, just listened.

  There was heavy breathing on the phone, and then he spoke, his voice purring in her ear. “Come into the kitchen, Cassie. I’ve got something for you. Something I’m making. A big surprise.”

  Cassie felt herself walking forward like her legs were moving on their own. The noises were louder in the kitchen as she got closer. She was ready to turn the corner and walk into the kitchen.

  She saw the man in black at the counter, his back to her as he worked on his surprise. He had a cutting board out, knives, bowls . . . and the two dead bodies of her cats lying next to the wooden cutting board, their dark bodies matted with blood, stretched out like dead rabbits ready to be skinned and prepped for dinner.