Asylum - 13 Tales of Terror

by Matt Drabble

  Gemma tugged his elbow gently and he followed her to the front door. His heart skipped a beat and he raised the gun with a trembling arm as she opened the door. There was no explosion of movement from inside; no cries of alarm or shouts of aggression and they both slipped quietly inside.

  He had barely closed the door behind him when he heard the throaty roar of a car approaching; he ran to the front window and peered out into the darkness. Powerful headlights shone in the distance illuminating the gravel lane that Julian had missed in the dark. “They’re coming,” he shouted, panicking. He had not formed a plan. There was no time, no time.

  “Here, quick,” Gemma yelled.

  Her voice was strong and clear and Julian responded to the authority, “How many will there be?” he asked.

  “Three at the most. There were five and two are dead in the crash, so there should only be three left.”

  “What do we do?” Julian floundered.

  “Get in that closet,” she pointed to a door near the front of the cabin. “They’ll come in and see me standing here. As soon as their attention is fully focused on me, you step out behind and shoot them. Don’t you hesitate or we’ll both be dead, or worse,” she added ominously.

  Julian ran for the closet as the car crunched to a halt outside. It may not be a good plan, but at least it was a plan and any plan was better than none. He wrenched open the closet door and jumped inside. The damp moldy smell was almost overpowering with the door closed, but he did not dare open it even a crack. Heavy winter coats tickled his neck from behind; the fur was pungent and ripe. He heard the cabin door suddenly fling open and heavy footsteps pounded in. Light flooded under the closet door as a generator rumbled and kicked in somewhere out back. He suddenly noticed that there was a knot hole in one of the planks that made up the closet door and he pushed one eye up against the vantage point. He could just make out three heavy set men; all three wore dark uniforms that upon this closer inspection seemed more military than police issue. The men were all burly and well built; powerful frames were augmented by gym honed muscle. Their faces wore identical heavy beards and their eyes were all deep set and cruel, as though devoid of compassion. They looked like what they were - dangerous men.

  “Where the hell is she?” One of the men barked.

  “I don’t bloody know, we’ve searched everywhere, there’s no trace,” answered another.

  “Maybe she got away with that guy?” Said the third.

  “And who the hell was he?” Said the first.

  “No idea. I thought that it was just the two of them and suddenly there are three. All we can do is wait for first light, we’ll track the bitch then. We found her once, and we can find her again.”

  Julian waited for the shouts that hadn’t come. Gemma had said that she would be in plain view when the men entered, and that would allow him to get the drop on them from behind. Wherever Gemma was she obviously wasn’t in plain view; he began to feel uneasy as yet another plan faltered. His heart stopped as all he could do was watch as the largest of the three men approached the closet. The door handle turned and he took a step backwards and raised the gun, his hand shaking. The door opened. He stood there illuminated for all to see in the harsh generator infused lights of the cabin. His arm ached from the tension and his finger twitched on the trigger.

  The large man was turned slightly; his attention focused towards his two companions and he threw a heavy coat into the closet without looking. The coat landed over Julian’s outstretched trembling arm holding the gun and he gasped in silent disbelief as the door swung closed again leaving him undiscovered. He was ready to laugh in shock when a loud crash silenced the generator outside and the cabin was plunged back into darkness. Even from his secluded position he could smell the petrol as he heard it spill and splash. There was a soft whoosh and a couple of seconds later he felt the heat as flames licked hungrily at the wooden cabin’s walls. The three men moved quickly.

  “It’s her,” one of them shouted, “She’s outside.”

  Julian heard the front door crash open and he saw through the knot hole that two of the men charged outside; their hands reaching inside their coats. The closet door suddenly swung open as the third man reached for his coat only to pause in shock as he saw Julian for the first time. Julian raised his arm holding the gun. His eyes locked with the much larger man. He opened his mouth to tell the cop or whatever he was not to move - maybe to freeze - but his finger trembled on the sensitive trigger and the gun went off. The explosion was monstrous in the small closet and Julian felt deafened by the blast. He watched in horror as the back of the large man’s head exploded out into the cabin in a fine red mist. The man slumped to his knees with a look of bewilderment on his face before pitching forward, dead. Julian realised that he was holding his breath and struggled to expel the build-up of air in his lungs. He stumbled out over the body. The rear wall of the cabin was now fully on fire; the smoke and fumes were filling the small area fast.

  “Bobby? Bobby?” One of the men outside yelled back into the cabin, “You get that bitch?”

  Julian’s senses revolted at the unforgivable rudeness of the man; despite everything that they had put her through, the man still spoke with such disrespect. He moved quickly to the side window. With a quick check around, he heaved himself up and out. He crept slowly around to the front of the cabin. Despite the growing heat he still felt more comfortable hugging the wooden logged walls.

  He moved to the front and peered around the corner of the small building. The other two men were peering in through the front door, their hands shielding their faces against the smoke and the heat.

  “Freeze,” he said, stepping out and trying for an authoritative tone but falling some way short.

  The two men turned towards him, their faces contorted with shock. “What the hell is this?” The first man said, “They’re using guns now?”

  “Don’t you move,” Julian stammered, “You just stay where you are, we’re not going to have any more of this nonsense. We are going to set things straight and we are going to get back on the plan.” His voice grew with strength at the thought of getting back on the plan. “We are going to get the authorities here and we are going to set things right,” his wounded arm still trembled but the other holding the gun was now rock still.

  “Look man,” one of the men barked irritably, “Just who the hell are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter who I am, I am just the one telling you how we are going to do things. STAY WHERE YOU ARE!” He shouted, suddenly realizing that the two men were drifting apart. He now had to swing the gun between them to cover them both.

  “Easy pal, just take it easy,” one of the men said whilst still tiptoeing away from his partner.

  “Yeah buddy,” the other man said, drifting his own way, “Maybe you’ve just wandered into something that you don’t understand. Maybe we made a mistake thinking that you were a part of this.”

  “STAND STILL!” Julian shouted, realizing that he was losing control again.

  The man to his right suddenly reached inside his coat and whipped out a silver gun that glinted under the fires dancing light. “PUT IT DOWN!” The man yelled.

  “YOU PUT IT DOWN!” Julian shouted back.

  “DROP IT!” The other man shouted as he drew a weapon to match his partner’s.

  An explosion of movement suddenly whipped from behind the two men. Julian saw it coming and was transfixed by the vision. The figure was large and bounded across the clearing with tremendous speed. Powerful muscles bunched beneath the fur and sharp white fangs glistened in the firelight. The thing didn’t slow down as it ran into the man to his right. Julian lowered his gun involuntarily as he stood mesmerized. Huge jaws clamped down on the man’s head; a wet popping sound turned Julian’s stomach as the bones crunched and shattered under the dominant assault. The man’s legs shook violently in a death dance bop and the creature ripped its jaws free. Blood spewed over the clearing and the thing howled to the heavens. The creat
ure turned to the last of the men.

  The man raised his silver gun, but way too slowly. The monster covered the distance in a flash and slashed with a violent razor tipped claw. The blow shredded the man’s thick coat with ease and he sank to his knees clutching to keep his insides in place.

  The monstrous vision swiveled its head back to Julian and any thoughts that he had of a savior disappeared when he saw the hunger in its eyes. It began to pad towards him, slowly, as though savoring the moment. Julian locked his gaze with the beast; it walked on all fours but it was larger than any wolf or dog that he had ever seen before. It was around the size of a grizzly bear but sleeker and more nimble. Its powerful haunches shimmered with muscle in the dancing flame light and its snout was long with deep set yellow eyes. Julian could only stare as it approached. His mind struggling to comprehend what he was seeing; wanting him to just lie down and sleep.

  He broke the locked gaze and suddenly realised that he was holding a weapon. He lifted the gun with difficulty. A simple piece of machinery with a simple purpose; he aimed the gun and pulled the trigger as many times as it would fire. There were five bullets left in the gun and three of them thudded into the animal leaving small red holes in its body. The animal staggered drunkenly at the impact and toppled over onto the ground.

  The man who had been clawed was still moving and Julian could hear him trying to talk,. He circled gingerly around the animal and towards the man.

  As he reached him he could see that the wounds were grievous and fatal; long bloody gouges were torn deeply in the man’s chest. His breath hitched and struggled in the cold night air. Julian leant in closer as the man tried to speak.

  “Take this, take it,” the man panted, holding out his silver gun. “We hunt them; this will kill it, only this.”

  Julian took the gun, more to remove it from a potential threat than to shoot the already dead animal. A movement behind him startled him from that conclusion. He turned in disbelief to see the animal starting to move. He raised his own gun again and pulled the trigger only to have the hammer clack on empty chambers. He stared down at the weapon; his forehead crinkled in puzzled thought.

  He turned his attention back towards the monster; incredibly the creature was in mid-air as he turned. Drooling fangs shone from foaming jaws as death flew through the air for him. He raised the other gun and pulled the trigger. A flash of lightning spat from the silver gun and the animal jerked violently from the impact and fell to the ground. Julian could only stare in wonder as the monster began to change. Its body shrunk and shortened; the thick fur receded and the snout and jaws retracted. The torso became lithe and supple, soft and feminine until he was looking down at Gemma.

  The man behind him dredged up his last words, “We tracked her and her mate. We killed him but only wounded her; that’s why she couldn’t change until she was stronger.” He gasped for the energy to finish before he was. “We thought that you were one too. That’s why you picked her up and saved her. Never heard of them running in threes. Should’ve known, sorry,” he panted. “Sorry I shot you,” he whispered, and then he was gone.

  Julian stood on the muddy ground; his mind had now locked the doors and given up the ghost. He clumsily attempted to straighten his hair and his clothes as the sun drifted slowly over the horizon welcoming the day. He checked his watch. It had been shattered during the night but it did not matter; there was time, still time to get back on the plan. All he had to do was find the schedule again. He could still make Dartford and he could still make his appointment. His face was frozen with a distant glaze and a strange crooked smile. He began to whistle a merry tune as he stepped over the bodies that he no longer saw, and walked off blindly into the woods.

  3.

  BLACKWATER HEIGHTS

  “You’re shitting me right?” Martin said when they emerged into the corridor again, “What the hell was that?”

  “Just one of many tales here,” Jimmy said, his elderly face twisted in delight.

  Martin looked back through the door slot into the room where they had just listened to an unbelievable tale. The small, balding, neat man sat on his comfortable bed; his hands crossed on his lap, his eyes staring at the ceiling. “How did he end up here?”

  “He was found wandering the woods some eight days after he disappeared; he was incoherent and babbling, so they say. The docs reckon that he was wound so tightly that whatever happened out there in the woods just plain threw him over the edge. He is a guy obsessed with routines and schedules; you’ll often see him pacing around the grounds cataloguing anything that he can find.”

  “What about his story? What about the people involved?”

  “Oh they found them alright. They found the double car accident and the cabin burned to the ground. One man’s body inside the cabin with a gunshot wound and three outside; one woman, naked, also with a gunshot wound and two men who had apparently been mauled by some wild animal.”

  “You’re not telling me that it’s true,” Martin laughed incredulously.

  “All I can say is this; there were three bodies outside the cabin, and only two looked like they had been attacked by some kind of wild animal.”

  Martin pondered the tale that he had just been told; it was one thing to fantasies about hearing these tales and compiling them into a book. But it was quite another to listen to a possibly deranged mental patient speaking so articulately as he spun his tale so convincingly.

  He looked down at his notebook his scribbled shorthand had already filled many pages between the background beginnings of the building itself, and Julian’s strange tale. His back nagged at him, sticking in a painful reminder of his injuries and his unsuitability for manual labor such as this. He looked over at Jimmy; the elderly janitor was stooped and twisted with age and his job. His finger joints were swollen with the unmistakable signs of arthritis on the march. His tired face was creased and lined with endless nights pushing a sloppy mop along these very corridors.

  Martin caught a flash of his own reflection in a clean and gleaming window; was this to be his future? His own pristine new uniform faded before his eyes, the blue becoming paler over time and continuous wash cycles. His features became tired and wrinkled; his hair grew white and thin. His back became stooped with pain and his very life force dissipated before his eyes. He shook off the vision angrily. He would not, could not, allow his future to become set in stone; a stone that was tied around his ankles as he was thrown to the bottom of life’s dark murky waters. Jimmy was offering him an alternative, an escape. A way out of this servitude; he knew instinctively that this idea could work. He could see himself taking a book of stories derived from the mouths of the seriously disturbed. The sheer notoriety would be enough to launch the book on a wave of interest and disgust. He could picture himself defending his book on morning TV shows, sandwiched between soap opera gossip and fashion tips. He could see himself being lightly grilled by grinning orange skinned women caked in too much makeup. It really could work; it could be a way out and a way forward. He looked towards the patiently waiting Jimmy and steeled himself against the dark night ahead.

  “Alright,” he said firmly, “Who’s next?”

  4.

  THE VOICE

  “Push him,” the voice whispered, “Do it now, quickly, quickly.”

  Duncan Murray turned around quickly to face the man behind him; a man who was not there. The voice had whispered in his ear but there was no-one standing behind him on the railway station platform. A woman some ten feet away was staring at him nervously as he had spun around with an angry expression to find that he was facing no-one. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders; must be over-tired, he thought to himself.

  Duncan was thirty eight years old, heavy set and scruffy. He was a graphic designer who existed within the tight confines of a soulless cubicle day in day out. His shaved head poking over the top of his clipped together walls, the bullet tipped shape seemingly unseen by his peers. His wardrobe consisted of three different, but eq
ually ill-fitting suits. His was a figure of lumps and curves that refused to conform to standard clothing shapes. He was a quiet man of little consequence; he’d often thought to himself that he would make a perfect bank robber as he seemed to cast little shadow over the world. He would find himself on far too many occasions having to reintroduce himself to people that he had actually met several times before. He was around six feet tall and shoulder broad; his middle was thicker than he would have liked, but eating was his crutch. His overweight frame was the convenient reason that he could point to for his general unhappiness. If only he was thinner then life would be better, but he knew deep down that he would never put the theory to the test. His hair was shaved short, mainly because he lacked ambition or imagination towards his appearance. His face was round; his eyes were a common hazel and he wore a chinstrap beard as he felt that the hair made his face look a little less like a beach ball.

  He looked up to the large station clock that hung on the railway station wall; it read 6:37pm. The evening was already dusky and the night was closing in fast. He had been struggling at work with a new advertising campaign for some dog food company product and his eyes were still seeing graphics and text floating across his vision. He was a man who would often stay too late and work too hard. Once he had a project he found himself unable to put it down until it was finished. This would have been an admirable trait if only anyone ever noticed. His work was always well received and viewed, but credit always fell further up the line than his desk.

  “Duncan,” the voice tried again.

  He turned around and still there was nobody within whispering distance of him. There were only three of them on the platform; himself, a woman dressed in evening attire behind him, and a man standing worryingly close to the edge of the platform in front.