Fear of the Dark: An Anthology of Dark Fiction

by Maria Grazia Cavicchioli

  Handyman

  by Mary A. Turzillo

  Dave was home free. He had killed her, the woman he loved, the woman who hadn’t been a bitch until—

  He had washed the blood from his hands and his body, blood which smelled earthy, like menstrual blood. He had washed away the blood, and the tears, too. And it would look like a serial killing.

  The Handyman Murders. Dave followed the stories in the Plain Dealer and Akron Beacon Journal. He’d gotten the idea back in May; by Fall it had grown to an obsession. Seductive voices came to him in dreams.

  And now he was speeding back through October cold, to his alibi on Mosquito Lake, whizzing past trucks and cars. The radio was on, a talk show, but he couldn’t follow it. The sleeves of his jacket smelled fishy, like bait. An exciting smell that reminded him of the dark blood.

  Music blared from his radio, an ad for — what? He forced his foot to lighten up on the accelerator. Bad time to get a ticket!

  How he used to love Cherie. She had been so energetic, ready for fishing trips, football games, home projects. Her strong hands, holding a fry pan, a hammer, his waist—

  Then they told her she had breast cancer.

  He stayed with her, loved her, reassured her. Hell, she lost the breast, but the cancer went away. Five years! Five years is the magic number, so she was cured. Home free.

  But her personality had changed. She hated sex. She wouldn’t travel, play with the kids, laugh at anything.

  “Dave,” she’d said, “nothing is any fun anymore.” She raised a limp hand — a hand that had been so strong — and let it fall.

  He’d tried to understand. Hell, he had understood — for ten years.

  What he couldn’t understand was her evil side, which surfaced after the mastectomy. She yelled at the twins, hit them, sulked for days, and once even swung a hot electric skillet at Dave.

  He was a patient man. He no longer loved her, but there was more to life: the burger shop, slow pitch games with the twins, the fishing trips.

  Then, one evening, he started talking to his night manager, Michelle. He told her the whole story. She listened, really listened.

  Michelle seemed to have all the gusto that Cherie had lost. She liked fishing, football, home projects. She met the twins — it was very natural, they came into the store for burgers all the time. And she told him she loved them, too.

  So gentle. Her hands were so soft. They smelled like soap when he kissed them.

  Divorce? Divorce converts a family of modest means into two families below the poverty level. A fast-food manager, which is what Dave was, can’t afford a divorce. And Cherie hadn’t worked since her first cancer operation.

  Guilt punched his heart for a moment, and blood washed his view of the night highway. But it was true, damn it. Cherie had turned into a poisonous bitch, full of ugly tempers.

  He had worked this through in his mind, a thousand times, trying to imagine another, more merciful way. But maybe she needed to be put out of her misery, like a fish flopping out of the water, its mouth torn beyond repair by the hook.

  The Handyman Murders preyed on his mind. Voices came to him: do it do it do it.

  The method was simple, just like it was described in the papers. He needed only an alibi. He thought it through. A fishing trip.

  The first Handyman victim had been a trucker’s wife. They’d called it domestic violence at first, but then other murders occurred with the trucker in custody, murders with identical signatures: victim’s head shaved, stab wounds with a power drill bit, the woman trussed with the cord from the drill. A couple of times the guy got the husband, too. Poor jerk had surprised the killer. And husbands had disappeared. Suspicious, but they ruled them out because they, too, had alibis for all the murders. The blood — but he put that out of his mind.

  His buddies, Tom and Dwayne, were sound sleepers, especially after the two bottles of Jack he’d plied them with, serving himself only tea-colored water. He crept out of his tent, drove south on 71, home.

  Up the walk, key into the lock, slip into the mud room.

  Cherie’s bedroom — he seldom slept there any more — smelled sour with sheets slept in too many nights, love denied too long. She looked like a corpse before he touched her, her skin bleached gray-white by the security light glaring through the window.

  He stripped to the buff, got the tools.

  He was afraid she would wake, but she never heard him enter the room. Tired, or drugged with whatever she took, or drunk. Or maybe she did hear him, but pretended not to. Avoid another exhausted conversation, another clenching of the sheet around herself, protective, don’t touch me.

  It made him sick to lunge forward with all his weight on his own unplugged drill, stabbing her deep with the drill bit, but that’s the way it had to be, since he wanted it to look like the work of the Handyman.

  The razor had slipped in his hands, but her scalp didn’t bleed much after death. Hanks of lifeless gray-blond hair fell to the bedroom floor. He stepped over them.

  He’d used his own tools. That was the Handyman killer’s method. Of course there would be traces of Dave’s finger prints. No reason they wouldn’t. He wiped the tools off, to make it look as if the Handyman had tried to obliterate his prints.

  He looked back just once. She looked like she had after the mastectomy, all gray and balding. Unexpectedly, he burst into tears. The twins wouldn’t find her; they were off at computer camp. They were better off without her poisonous depression. Her mother had a key, would check on her when she didn’t answer the phone.

  Cherie’s long misery was over. At least he could tell himself that. He had freed them both.

  He sobbed helplessly, trying not to make noise. He showered, washed the blood out of his scalp, his chest hair, even his pubic hair. He washed away his own tears. Then he donned his clothes and ran back to his pickup, parked blocks away.

  ○

  Now he flexed his fingers, aching as they were from clutching the wheel. He had to get back, crawl into the cold tent, the cold sleeping bag, and pretend he’d been there all night, cozy, sleepy, warm.

  He tried to think of the fishing trip, baiting hooks, casting, pulling in bass or bluegill, but his mind kept going over the plan he had just executed. The wife he had just executed.

  The other murders always involved married women, home alone. Ten murders so far. The husbands might be victims too, since five (or was it six?) of them had disappeared. Dave grinned, a frightened rictus that hurt his jaws. He wondered if a few of the other murders might have involved situations like his, with the husband trying to make it look like a serial murder, then running away, to start a better life.

  Just then he ran over something, an angular thing like a fancy, huge fishhook. It had fallen out of a big Peterbilt that had just roared past him.

  The car lurched, pulled stubbornly to the left. He fought it over onto the berm.

  Shit! A flat. His mind raced. How would he get back to Tom and Dwayne by dawn, to establish his alibi? Shit, shit, shit!

  If only he had a spare. A real spare, not one of those silly hemorrhoid pillows.

  He got out, feet crunching cold gravel, and looked. He was screwed, royally. He could change the tire and get back, but Tom and Dwayne would notice the donut spare.

  Trucks zoomed past. Then he saw the truck that had passed him just before the flat. It U-turned back, and it bore the Michelin doughboy logo! If only—

  The driver had jumped down from the cab and was striding across the median toward him. “Need help, buddy?” It was a woman, strong and competent-looking. She wore steel-toed boots and a green flannel jacket.

  “Oh, lady, could you just — sell me a tire? I’ll pay anything.” He wasn’t even thinking how he would mount it.

  “Sure,” she drawled. “Step around to the back of the trailer and I’ll help you pick one out.”

  Oh, God. He was going to get away with it after all.

  She le
d him across the median and gave him a leg up into the van.

  Inside, he was blind until she turned on a powerful flashlight.

  There were no tires in the truck. Just bags, transparent plastic bags. And a smell.

  Strange that the smell would be so strong, in the cold. He knelt and peered inside one.

  A man with blank, wild eyes stared out. Dave jumped back. Other bags, other men. In various states of decomposition.

  She came up behind him and said, “God love them, the police were right. Those were serial murders. But only of the husband. I didn’t do the wives. The husbands did them, first.”

  “How did you know?” said Dave. His voices, the urging voices that helped him plan, had abandoned him. The lie fell apart in his hands, along with his belief that she was better off dead.

  Nobody was better off dead. Not even him.

  “Some say I have a sixth sense.” She came closer, clasped his wrist. Her hand was cold, cold as dirt, corpse cold. Her scarf fell off, and her naked scalp gleamed briefly in the headlights of a passing car. Then her other hand came up, jamming something heavy and agonizing into the cavity below his ribs, and the drill’s power cord whipped his legs.

  Mary Turzillo’s Nebula-winner, “Mars Is No Place for Children,” and her Analog novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl are recommended reading on the International Space Station. She has been a finalist on the British SFA, Pushcart, Stoker, Dwarf Stars, and Rhysling ballots. Her poetry collection Lovers & Killers won the 2013 Elgin Award for Best Collection. Her most recent book is Sweet Poison, Dark Renaissance, 2014, a collaboration with Marge Simon. Mary lives in Berea, Ohio, with her scientist-writer husband Geoffrey Landis.

  Keeper of the Light

  by Paul Kane

  He was one of the last keepers...

  They were a dying breed, their homes taken over.

  Harry Ingleby made his way up the winding staircase, the smooth white walls gently guiding him to this destination. It was impossible to get lost in such a place, the levels connected by this spiraling set of steps. There were only four anyway: the ground floor, with its entrance and porch, housing the generator that powered this whole structure; the living area, which also contained his kitchen; his bedroom level; then almost at the very top, where he was heading right now — the service room where the fuel and replacement lamps were stored, plus the small emergency battery.

  It was impossible to lose your way and hard not to be aware of everything that was happening on every floor. He paused on the stairs, cocking his head, listening to the sounds which echoed throughout the tall edifice. The thrum of the device which kept his charge ‘alive,’ conducted along its length like a note carried on a tuning fork. That’s how he felt about the precious commodity he’d been placed in charge of; it was alive, and he was here to take care of it. Day in, day out, he’d maintain it. Fixing problems where he could, feeding the generator, polishing lenses ready for a quick switch...

  Lives depended on him and the sentinel he took care of. Harry continued his climb to the service room, and out onto a balcony situated just below the main lens: the Gallery. Even here, at an angle to the lens itself, he had to be careful not to look directly at the beam, as prolonged exposure could blind him. Harry didn’t want that — imagine, permanent darkness! He couldn’t think of anything more frightening (well, maybe one thing). But it was okay to just stand and lean against the rail, looking out over the edge of his little piece of Britain. He took up the binoculars hanging around his neck. It was rough out there, dangerous, plenty of need for his light. And even as he thought it, the beam swept round again in its obligatory arc, passing over his head and cutting a swathe into the night: doing the same round the other side as well. Harry couldn’t help smiling as he lowered his glasses. They were a good team, him and the lamp. Together they made a difference.

  Some might say it was a lonely existence he’d chosen... actually, technically it chose him. But Harry was used to being alone. He’d been on his own for some time now, a good few years, ever since his wife and children had died in the accident. An accident he still blamed himself for. Harry had to stop himself from thinking about it, and even as he did his eyes began to water, tears threatening to break through. But he sniffed them back. Stupid! he told himself. What good could come of dwelling on the past? He should be concentrating on the good work he was doing now, preventing deaths. And he was never truly alone, as long as he had his lighthouse.

  He spotted another tiny light in the distance, growing closer. Bringing his binoculars up again, he pressed them hard against the sockets of his eyes. His grip tightened as he adjusted the magnification, attempting to see more clearly. He could still only make out a faint glow in the distance. Harry let the glasses drop and gripped the rail in front of him instead, leaning forward as if that might afford him a better view than using the binoculars. The beam above him swung around again, completing another 360 degree turn and blasting its luminescence outwards. Would they see it? Harry wondered. See it in time, was more to the point. Would it help?

  He brought up his glasses one last time, but the tiny light on the horizon had already vanished. Harry had no idea, but he hoped they’d spotted the beam — he hoped it had reached them out there, a warning and a comforting message that someone was keeping an eye out. He hoped they’d turned away, and that’s why he could no longer see their own light, but had no way of knowing, or finding out...

  He could use the radio, he realized. Harry had to do that anyway, because although he had just about enough fuel for now, he was a bit worried about that replacement part. One of the cogs integral to the rotation of the beam had started to struggle, wearing down from use. He could hear it. Only a slight rattle, but it was there. He heard everything… they’d promised to deliver it the last time he’d made contact, but it had yet to materialize. Harry understood that his superiors were busy people, but their lack of thought could easily put people in jeopardy.

  Tutting, he made his way back down a couple of levels and fired up the transceivers and speaker system, powered — like the internal lights — by the generator. That wasn’t to say he didn’t have his backups; Harry always had those. There were oil lamps on every single level, because you could never be too careful. This place was too important for everything to go dark.

  For everything to—

  Harry busied himself on the radio, twiddling knobs. He hadn’t used it in a while, didn’t even really talk to the other keepers on it. He preferred instead to keep to himself. It was better that way. Only speaking to people when necessary, but at the same time providing them with an invaluable service. A service that might just keep them alive.

  It was ironic, because now that he wanted to get in touch with someone, all that was thrown back at him was static.

  “Hello,” said Harry, “can anyone hear me?” Nothing. Harry had never been a big fan of mobile phones — it used to take him about half an hour to answer a text — but even if he wasn’t, such a thing would do him no good here. There was zero chance of getting any signal; he’d been told that when he moved in. The main phone lines were also sporadic due to location, and more often than not would be dead — like today. Radio really was his only hope of getting through...or at least it had been.

  “Hello? Anyone,” Harry tried again. Still just the hiss of static. No contact with the tiny light, no word from his superiors or even his ‘colleagues.’ He banged his fist on the table. Breathing in and out slowly, he calmed himself down. It wasn’t worth getting this upset over, was it?

  Might be. Harry hadn’t quite decided. That cog was rattling again as the beam swiveled round. Perhaps it was time to get some sleep? He’d been up very early that morning... And why was that? he asked himself. Because you hadn’t been able to sleep, that’s why...

  No, it was because of the chores he had to do. The rituals that kept him going, and kept this place going. Kept his living light alive. Kept his mind off other things...

 
; Things like arriving home and seeing his wife Clare. Seeing the state of his children, Toby and Sally Anne. If only he’d listened to the warnings, if only he’d made sure they were protected.

  Harry closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. That was why he’d taken this job, wasn’t it? At least partially. Yes, he could run away and hide here, but he was also trying to keep those strangers out there safe: doing for them what he hadn’t been able to do for his family, which was why that tiny light had upset him so much. He didn’t have a clue whether he’d made a difference, whether he’d been able to offer them a chance.

  Sleep. You should try and sleep now, he told himself yet again. But Harry still found himself back up in that service room, checking over the mechanics, polishing the spare lenses until he thought he might just wear them through. And all the time above him, the lamp kept on turning, wiping aside the darkness like a frustrated chess player, knocking all the pieces from the board.

  And he wondered what had happened to that tiny glow out there, the people travelling alone in the emptiness: perhaps bringing supplies, or transporting families.

  Families like his own.

  What the hell was wrong with him? Usually he could hold it together enough to focus on his job, his very important job. But there had been the sense that he was a part of something before, something much bigger than just himself — in spite of how much he wanted to be left to his own devices. Now, well, he wasn’t so sure. There was one way to tell, but he didn’t want to go there, not even for a moment. It was inviting trouble, and while there was...