Urbane and Other Horror Tales

by Frazer Lee

  What others are saying about

  Urbane and Other Horror Tales

  "Beautifully horrific - the writing is absolutely superb, and every story is satisfying"

  -- Horror Madness & Mayhem

  "A must read, genuinely horrific, well-written book"

  -- Necrocarnival

  Urbane and Other Horror Tales

  by Frazer Lee

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2010 by Frazer Lee

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to frazerlee.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  Contents

  Urbane

  Pendragon Rising

  Ill Met By Moonlight

  Conspiracy Of Silence

  The Minus Touch

  Tinsel

  Hair Of The Dog

  Half/Life (bonus flash fiction, eBook edition only)

  About the Author

  Urbane

  Jennifer examined the bone-saw through tired, aching eyes.

  Drifting off momentarily, she stared at the sticky red residue clinging to the sharp teeth of the circular blade. Tiny fragments of bone and grue glistened in the overhead lights. Drip-drip, went the tap. Plink-plink, went the surgical steel table as the water droplets parachuted down onto its smooth surface. They made little clearings in the river of blood there, then mingled with the trails of red and swam steadily downstream toward the plughole’s abyss.

  “Wanna get pizza? Or are you gonna cosy up with John Doe over there all night?”

  Jennifer snapped out of her trance.

  Her colleague, Bill had already scrubbed up and was ready to go. And he was asking her out again. Jennifer was never quite comfortable being asked out over the dead bodies in the morgue, especially by Bill. He had funny, creepy eyes. Or maybe he just looked at her funny. Either way, he wasn’t going to get a look in.

  “No thanks Bill,” she heard herself say, “I’d better clean up and get going. I’m meeting a friend tonight.”

  Bill made a joke about her having a life, leered at her in that disconcerting way of his and (praise the lord) left.

  Jennifer set about bagging up the body of her John Doe and washed down the table, ready for tomorrow’s cadavers. She didn’t dislike doing autopsies; it was kind of therapeutic to her. No, it was just that there were so damn many this month.

  The New York night was freezing cold and loud as hell. Just the way she liked it. She breathed in the sulphur of the air hungrily. Heading home, Jennifer stopped off at the store to grab a snack and some body spray. She hadn’t had a date in ages and she was feeling good about tonight’s. Hospital orderlies weren’t usually her type, but this young British guy definitely had something about him. He was charming, witty, and urbane. Yes, he was handsome and just a little bit mischievous around the eyes. Not like yucky Bill, oh no. He had a cool name too – it had made her laugh when he introduced himself as Geez. “Like geyser?” she had said. And he had laughed too. This was all very encouraging; the sex would be great. Yes, he’d do.

  Grinning to herself now, Jennifer stepped into the cab. As it trundled along to the club, she sniffed her wrists. The body spray was a little acrid, but musky enough to disguise the stench of latex gloves and chemicals from her busy day. She settled back and enjoyed the ride. Despite her tiredness, Jennifer was feeling good about herself. She felt like having a drink and dancing.

  Hot white searchlights pierced the night sky above the club. Massive fiery letters spelled out “EVILUTION” above the entrance. A crowd of revelers lined up impatiently outside the doors.

  Jennifer paid the cab driver and took in the scene for a moment. So it was a rock club. This was going to be one hell of a party.

  She clutched her invite and, ignoring the queue, held it out to a huge, monolithic doorman. He looked like he had been forged from granite and wrapped in layers of beef. His hands were bigger than Jennifer’s TV set. Suddenly, he smiled. She had an invite – she must be somebody important. And as he ushered her inside, seeming to shrink by a few feet as he did so, Jennifer really felt like somebody important. The collective gaze of the revelers, all lined up in the cold, seemed to be one of searing envy. And she had to admit; Jennifer liked it.

  Inside, the music was deafening. As Jennifer entered the hot maw of the club, her mouth opened in wonder at the sheer size of the place. Massive sculptures of intertwining bodies snaked upwards from floor to ceiling, framed by giant red velvet drapes. A balcony, like a pulpit in this cathedral of sweat and noise, overlooked the huge dance floor. Behind it, colored light fizzed and swirled through a vast stained glass window.

  Geez was waiting for her at the bar. He looked great. His hair slightly ragged, and his suit like something from an experimental Japanese movie. This was certainly a change from hospital orderly garb, and Jennifer liked it. He ordered her a large vodka tonic - her favourite drink.

  When she insisted on paying, he laughed and said she could get the next round.

  So British.

  After a couple of stiff drinks, they hit the dance floor. The music was heavy, rumbling and sexy. Jennifer got into it immediately. She felt good, and Geez was keeping up with her. As their bodies brushed together, she could feel the electric effect he was having on her. She felt more intoxicated as they danced. The music slowed and she allowed Geez to place his hands on her as they danced. He stroked her face and caressed the small of her back. Then, he licked his finger and placed it inside his pocket.

  Drawing his finger out, Jennifer saw the little dab of white powder on its tip. She giggled tipsily. “Well, why not?” she thought. It had been a long time since she had done anything so naughty. Since her med school days in fact, and they were a distant memory.

  Jennifer sucked on Geez’s finger hungrily. The drug cascaded down her throat like popping candy. Geez threw back his head and laughed merrily. Then they kissed. The lights whirled and the music seemed to bleed warmly into Jennifer’s ears, the very floor beneath her feet grew soft.

  As the song finished, Geez whispered desperately into Jennifer’s ear. She wanted him too; it was true. He led her away through the crowd. There was a place they could go, where no one would disturb them.

  Throwing back her head to steal another look at the beautiful stained glass, Jennifer saw a figure standing on the pulpit balcony above her. He seemed to be smiling at her through his cigar smoke. Rather dapper, he was. Immaculately dressed and older than anyone in the club, Jennifer had a clarifying thought.

  He must be the owner of the club, she thought. And cheekily, she’d like to thank him personally after she was done with Geez.

  Kissing and laughing as they went, the lovers crashed through a fire escape door and down a stairwell into the gloom beneath the club. The light was scant, coming as it did from emergency lights in the stairwell. A slight exhilarating chill gave Jennifer goose bumps. Groping under Geez’s shirt, she felt his nipples stiffen too. As he pushed her gently against a wall, Jennifer’s eyes searched the darkness for clues.

  “Where are we?” she asked, breathlessly. Her voice echoed as she spoke. Wherever they were, it was a large room of some kind.

  “Underground car park,” mumbled Geez as he kissed her neck, “It’s disused, no-one ever comes down here anymore. Well, no-one but us perverts…”

  She laughed. As his fingers penetrated her clothing, Jennifer gave into
her hunger completely. The drabness and detritus of the working day were falling away utterly, the darkness of the subterranean car park replaced by a brilliant white light as she closed her eyes.

  She could feel the drug Geez had so kindly administered really kicking in now. Piercing dots of sharp crystal joined the whiteness in her mind’s eye. Geez parted her legs and spread her arms out by her side so that she formed an X against the wall. She drifted almost out of her body and into a reverie – a place where every nerve ending was numb with love and desire.

  Whatever Geez was doing to her, she never wanted it to stop.

  Suddenly a light exploded in her face, blinding her. Someone had thrown a light switch. Dozens of strip lights had buzzed into life. Her eyes were open, but her vision was blurred and distorted. Distant shapes teased her with their oblique forms. She squinted, and saw what looked like Geez standing in front of her. He was not alone. Others stood around him in a little group. She could not move her arms and legs.

  The onlookers stood politely and waited as Jennifer’s vision returned to her. She became all too quickly aware of a strong smell pervading the damp cold air of the car park.

  Blood. Her own blood.

  Looking down with panic, Jennifer’s vision snapped into focus revealing the source of this sanguine smell.

  Geez had certainly had his way with her.

  Jennifer’s belly was wide open. Careful incisions had been made to reveal the pulsating organs beneath the folds of her flesh. These folds had been stretched out and pinned back onto the wall, so her abdomen looked like an obscene fleshy umbrella.

  Her intestines were clinging on for dear life – any sudden movement and they would surely spill onto the cement floor. She swallowed. Her wrists had been nail-gunned to the wall. Strangely, the musk of the body spray was still pleasing to Jennifer. The drugs were obviously still doing their job.

  Looking beyond Geez’s little group, she could see the shapes in the distance more clearly. Stretched between each concrete pillar of the underground car park was a human body, pinned out as she was, forming Xs as far as the eye could see. Some were quite fresh and others were horribly decomposed, their flesh livid and yellowing under the fluorescent lights. More John and Jane Does than she had ever operated on at the hospital.

  Jennifer tried to scream as the group approached her, but no sound would come. The distant rumble of the nightclub music dared her to make a noise.

  At the head of the group was the striking man Jennifer had seen watching her from the balcony. He took one last puff of his cigar before nonchalantly tossing it away. Behind him, Geez and a few other striking urbanites smiled at her sickly. To them, she was a work of art.

  Eviscerated.

  “Who are you?” croaked Jennifer, pathetically.

  “We are the Urbane,” came the old man’s reply as he entered her, “And we must feed.”

  Then the wanton rushing of the others. Teeth and claws snapping and twitching as they devoured her slick, wet organs.

  Drip-drip went her blood. Plink-plink as it joined the dark crimson pool beneath her feet.

  Pendragon Rising

  I. Descent

  Arthur stumbled wearily from the feasting hall. On the field, the battle had been won. Yet his head still reeled from the cacophony of an internal torment.

  Crashing through the heavy oak door leading to the servant's staircase, sparks leaping from his mighty sword's blade as he dragged it behind him, Arthur headed for the only place in the castle where he might find solitude.

  He tumbled into the cellar and the bitter stench hit him hard. Dim candlelight revealed a graveyard of twisted and punctured armor. Broken weapons jutted out from between ruined breastplates and crushed gauntlets reached out at him pathetically like the hands of the dying. The armory dump felt like a moment on the battlefield had been frozen in time with the bodies of the dead and wounded shedding their metal skins and leaving behind only their pain, their torture. But strongest of all was the smell. The sickly sweet aroma of blood, sweat, excrement and rain on scarred armor hung thick and heavy in the air and Arthur inhaled its rancidity with each labored breath.

  His head swam as a rush of dizzy nausea flooded his brain. Sinking to the floor, he came to rest on a funereal pyre of corrupted chain mail and corroded weaponry. There he spiraled down into sleep, driven by his despair, embracing his misery.

  Outside, the warm breeze turned to an icy chill as a cloaked figure snaked her way through the trees and over the drawbridge. The sentry guards did not stir from their wine-sodden slumbers as she slid past them, silent as a ghost.

  A sly smile curled her lips as her nostrils located Arthur's scent. It was delicious, a heady mixture of torment and decay. She knew exactly where to find him. Her lithe body glided down the spiral staircase and into the armory. The fetid odor of blood on metal assaulted her senses and her arousal heightened as she surveyed the exotic scrap-yard surrounding her. Slipping her cloak, she crawled naked across the iron, mail and steel toward Arthur's sleeping form. He was like a broken puppet beneath her as she mounted him ravenously, her ashen skin slicked with blood and her head thrown back like a carrion bird's cawing for its prey. As she took his seed from him, her long canines pierced the warm flesh of his neck like shards of ice. Triumphant, she spat her own blood down into his throat with a guttural hiss before whispering, "The circle is complete, my brother. You will die. You will change, and the future I have dreamed is now real." Disappearing into the folds of her cloak, she took her leave of him.

  Searing pains in Arthur's stomach awoke him with a start. Every inch of his intestine was aflame and as he tried to move, a violent muscle spasm caused him to vomit horribly onto the armor lying next to him. Bile and blood slid across the dented surface and, for a moment, he saw his own terrible reflection staring back at him.

  His pallid face looked centuries old, his skin an outward image of the rotting misery that dwelt so deep within him. He vainly tried to measure the hours he had been lying there, vague memories of the woman who had loved him amidst the filth coming back to him in nauseous waves.

  Tears of blood streamed from his eyes as he remembered what had passed before he fled to the cellar. His own wife with another in the forest. His bedchamber empty, as silent and mocking as an open grave. Arthur cried in outrage as hot pain invaded his every nerve ending causing him to double up and shudder spasmodically. The very marrow in his bones felt like molten lava, his flesh as cracked and dry as scorched earth. He was dying. His last breath left his body like an unanswered question.

  II. Rising

  He rose again three nights later. Shocked mourners fled from his wake screaming their fear into every corner of the castle. Horrified knights rushed to their master and stood agape, not knowing whether to kneel before him or strike him down, so unholy was his form. Arthur strode unto his minions greatly transformed. All his enemies, even death, had fallen before him and he felt a burning need within to do battle once more, to make a mockery of the hundreds who would collapse around him, driven by the knowledge that no blade could harm him ever again. Maidens wept in ecstatic terror as he drained their nubile bodies of life's blood in great draughts atop his throne that night.

  Many fled the castle in horror, becoming prey to those who stayed to join the invincible ranks of Arthur's new undead army, their thick blood replacing wine in the knight's chalices. Peasants, whores and the dispossessed flocked to Camelot in droves to lose themselves in dark days and depraved nights, offering themselves as sustenance to the castle's collectively unquenchable thirst. A squalid stench billowed forth from the moat, which had itself turned red and stagnant with the blood and carcasses of the dead.

  Those outside Camelot, taking refuge in convents and monasteries, declared holy war on any creature leaving the castle in defiance of those who had once been their protectors and who were now their hunters. Any attempt to overcome Arthur's legions proved futile however, and so Sister Guenivere begged an audience with her reborn King
despite the frantic dissuasion of God's servants.

  Concealing Excalibur beneath her holy robes, Guenivere entered Camelot's gaping maw, weeping at the depravity that had so indelibly stained the kingdom she had once loved and cherished. She stepped into the Great Hall where shadows had devoured the once brilliant light. Dim red pools were cast at her feet by flickering torches, which crackled hungrily as she passed beneath them. The air was insufferably hot and a stifling haze swelled up and penetrated her clothing like a sick breath. As she entered the chamber that housed the Round Table, a droplet of salt sweat splashed heavily onto her forehead. Casting her eyes upward, Guenivere saw that oily perspiration coated every inch of the stonework.

  The chamber breathed lustily, drawing her deeper inside. A huge fire licked and spat mockingly as she gasped in horror at the clutter of bones and human remains surrounding it. Around the Table sat the architects of this private Hell.