Horror For Good - A Charitable Anthology

by Jack Ketchum

  And he dreamed.

  He dreamed that he was passing through dense layers of obscurity, with no colour to them that he could name, all heaving and shifting laboriously around him. He could see people moving about in it, their shapes but not their faces. He could hear the sounds but not the words they were speaking, if indeed they were words. In his hand was the letter of complaint, crumpled tightly into his fingers. He was going to give it to the Directors in person, that would show them.

  The things, the people here, became clearer.

  Some were sitting. Some standing and gesturing.

  They were Human Resources and they served the Directors. Well-made latex skins were drawn tightly over what was nameless, mottled and passed for their flesh. Their voices were titters and flirting giggles coiling through the ripe air. He could smell their sutures. He could hear the splitting of stitched scabs unpeeling as they scratched at themselves. Not a patch of the skin on them was healthy. Glistening insects peered out from the drooling ulcerous recesses of their congested eye-holes. Their perfume was a caustic fusion of formaldehyde and bleach catching at the sensitive membranes of his throat's tissue. What horrors were crawling around inside them, he wondered, laying dewy eggs, fucking and bleeding, then coming out to lie down in empty corners and die, alone and unseen. They cooed and called out to him, such enticing necrophiliac forms.

  He crushed the letter in his hands, drawing some strength and resolve from the anger laced into it.

  He moved through the pressing bodies towards the office doors resolving out of the smog before him. Plain pine surfaces broken up by squares of frosted glass. Looking in, he could see nothing for sure but the space within was a pregnant roiling opacity, a rancid fog of amniotic waves. The Directors were in there, somewhere, waiting, indistinct and tremulous. The stench, the sour, uncirculated, substantial stuff that ran throughout the building must be their doing, he thought. They need it. He rested his hand on the door handle, meaning to twist it hard, turn it harder, stride in with purpose, make himself heard.

  Then it came!

  Rushing from out of the depths of the office, seething and amorphous. Violently pink and scar-tissue raw. Enraged sloth. A mouth, many mouths, perished rectums oozing fluid, hanging wide open, hungry and gnawing. Limbs were outstretched, stumpily twitching as it struck against the other side of the door. Glass squeaked, shrill and high, a great weight went dragging down over it, fumbling at the door handle, making it turn, turn, and turn.

  Opening the door!

  It was then that Stuart woke up, in the dark, breathing heavily and all he could taste in the air was the stench. Overhead, he saw his bedroom ceiling as loam composed of compacted cemetery earth, teeming with charnel orgies of grave-lice, their moist and corrupt forms as moon-silvered as silk worms. A steady rain of stinking black soil and bone-nuggets was spilling down onto him. And in the outer gloom, the Directors lurked, hissing fumes out from their flatulent bodies. They spoke to him, a damp choir of synthesised gastric bowel harmonies.

  He saw her standing there, their PA, their pale puppet, this was why she never became tainted or aged like the rest of them. Wood lasts, flesh rots. Raya smiled at him and it was a smile born of red, wet, awful dreams as she translated the foul speech of the Directors.

  "When can you finish?"

  And this time he was awake, rushing to the bathroom, emptying himself of what little food and water he could bear to consume these days.

  ***

  Breathing hard and heavy, Stuart approached the entrance to the lift, drawing glances from beady, sticky eyes tired of staring at computer screens and endless mounds of printout paper.

  Arbeit macht frei.

  Work sets us free.

  He heaved the metal doors apart. He was not sure if he was here for real or here in a dream. He listened, as he admired the dangling outcrops of blackly-greased machinery, to the echoes travelling up and down, up and down, unable to escape out into the light and the air of the external world. No, for them, forever, was this vertical tunnel of unlit interior horror where their last moments were smudged and scraped into the crumbling brickwork. He chanced a glance up into the blackness above, feeling woozy, so sick on his feet.

  Falling, falling, smashing, crashing, bones breaking through bleeding pulp, fractured ribs stirring as stiff fingers through him, splitting open his insides and spilling his blood and fluid as unappetising spatters of steaming raw soup all over the place.

  The lift-shaft was an open black throat waiting to swallow him.

  He was leaning over, looking down into the pit. He saw them, all of them down there at the bottom of the shaft. Lumps of leprous blubber in mildewed suits and skirts, splitting at the seams. Pasty faces made hoggish and bloated by time, by decay, smeared with crusty traces of blood and sputum. The source of the stench, what was rotten about this place, the bodies of those who said no.

  Arbeit macht frei.

  Work sets us free.

  And he heard movement behind him, lots of pairs of little shuffling feet, towers of paper printouts slumping and falling as they were disturbed by the passage of squared shoulders and bulbous hang-dog heads. The masses of the workforce, his dull and dead-eyed colleagues, were there, encroaching, and he was retreating before them, nowhere else to go. They were herding him, guiding the sacrifice to its final resting place. They had their work to do. The lift-shaft exulted, issuing an ecstatic groan that was dreadful and dimensionless, emanating from a deep, dark place that few of the living can knowingly perceive.

  And Raya was there, at the rear of the herd, smiling, her cobalt blue hair shining. She ran the corpse-white slug of her tongue across her lips and gave him a lingering wink. He was sure he heard the klakt-klakt of wood on wood.

  "We don't use the lift. Something else does."

  Stuart stepped backwards one last time and, when he cried out, there was an echo, ascending and descending. The doors shut without a sound. The floor was no longer there. There was no more light. And Stuart went tumbling, crashing and smashing on down, as he had been doing his whole life, as we all do, falling from one uncertain point to another, not knowing what waits but knowing it is there, out of sight but always there, waiting to claim us as its own.

  Waiting to set us free.

  —Rena Mason

  Rena Mason is a SUNY nursing graduate whose minor studies were in Language Arts. She currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, is a member of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, a supporting member of the Horror Writers Association, and has been a member of the New Orleans Saints & Sinners Literary Festival where she was a guest reader and panelist on YA fiction. She is preparing her suburban sci-fi/horror novel, The Evolutionist, for submission. This short story is her first published work.

  —The Eyes Have It

  By Rena Mason

  It's true what they say—the eyes are the windows to the soul. I discovered this lying on the rooftop of my workplace. I was dying from a stab wound to my lung. The last breath I took bubbled through the knife slit between my ribs, then my pupils dilated. From the inside, I saw a soft glow at the end of a long, gloomy tunnel. I reached up, but the flickering incandescence disappeared before I could ascend. I sensed that instead of me departing, something else entirely—something not of this world—came in.

  ***

  When I was ten years old, I prayed to see angels. Shadow people came instead. They visited on the darkest nights, after I'd had long days and my eyelids felt their heaviest. Sheer black figures huddled in the corner of my room, hidden by the darkness. They whispered unintelligible white noise. I lay awake those nights with the covers pulled up to my eyes. Light from outside shone through a slit in the window beside my bed, and somehow I knew they could not cross it. They were waiting for the time when they could. I stopped praying to see angels, and when I became a teenager I never saw them again.

  ***

  Ray Briar was head of the accounting department where I worked. I was in sales. He was in his mid-thirtie
s, tall, brown hair with premature gray salting the sides, and deep mocha eyes—handsome in a mature, authoritative way. Everyone knew about his wife and kids, he kept framed family portraits on top of his desk. Those pictures; however, a display of his loyalty, did not seem to deter him from flirting with me. For months he came over to my cubicle and told me how beautiful I was. In return I walked over and told him he looked good in some particular color tie. When we were at the water cooler together, he always handed me a full cup with a big smile. He told me on more than one occasion he liked the way my skirt flounced against the back of my legs. I always felt his eyes on me when I walked away. It was harmless, but something in his stare and the tone of his voice often unsettled me.

  Ray was my only on-the-job friend. No one else would talk to me for more than five minutes unless it had to do with work. I often wondered why, and eventually chalked it up to jealousy in order to protect my pride. I was the youngest sales supervisor in the history of the company, and a woman. Then I learned from Gina, the office gossip, that Ray told everyone he and I had been having a secret affair. Everything came to light for me then. It explained the last few months of unprovoked scowls, sneers, and hushed whispers behind my back. I was furious, helpless, and desperate. Ray made me the office pariah, and I wanted to know why. I wanted the truth.

  ***

  My moment came a few days later when Ray and I were alone at the water cooler. "How's it going?" he asked. He gazed into my eyes, smiled big and innocent, then drank some water.

  "Just great, because apparently you and I are having an affair."

  Water spewed from his mouth. He quickly put his hand up and coughed into it. He was still catching his breath when he asked me who I had heard that from.

  "Do you deny saying it?" I asked. "Telling everybody a lie?"

  He would not answer. Ray lowered his head then leaned his face in front of mine. I thought he might kiss me, and as angry as I was, my heart still fluttered with lovesick desire. He glowered down at me for a moment then looked away.

  I refused to yield. "I don't think you should play games like this, Mr. Briar," I said.

  He stepped back and forced an automatic smile. "Me either. Let me get back to you on this." He slowly relaxed his stance then casually walked away.

  After lunch break he came over to my cubicle with some phony paperwork. On top of the papers, there was a handwritten note. I can't stand this anymore. Please stay late and meet me on the roof. I promise, I'll explain everything. Shred this when you're done reading it. I looked up at him and smiled. I turned around and dropped the paper into the shredder.

  "I'm counting the minutes."

  He grinned, then went back to his desk.

  I had never been up to the roof before. It's where all the office smokers hang out. I was nervously excited to hear what Ray was going to tell me. My mind raced with a multitude of scenarios.

  After work there were still several people hanging around. I pretended to wait in front of the elevators until it was clear. I carefully opened the door to the stairwell, stepped in, and let it shut gently behind me. I snuck up the steps and opened the door out to the roof. A strong wind gust whipped hair around my head, blinding me. I stumbled onto the rooftop and the door slammed shut behind me with a clang.

  I supposed it looked like any other rooftop. A bevy of tube shapes, squares, and rectangles, probably air vents and electric boxes, were painted taupe and jutted up from the drab gravelly surface. Cigarette butts lined the edges of pipes and vents shielded from the wind. I wanted the vantage point to spot Ray as soon as he came out, so I walked several feet toward one of the vents, and sat down. It was a nice view all around. Indigo domed the uppermost sky and melted into brilliant citrine. It would soon be dark.

  Then Ray came through the doorway. He saw me look at him, smiled, then waved me over. He stepped onto the roof, but held the handle and closed the door quietly. He had an intense look in his eyes. As soon as I reached him, he wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. "I love you," he said. "I've always loved you." He spun us around then pushed me up against the brick wall next to the door. I was shocked, had lost my breath and train of thought. He put his hand up my skirt then forced his way between my legs. He buried his face into the side of my neck. He was kissing, licking, biting—mumbling. I was confused. I struggled, but it felt both good and wrong. His murmurs grew louder, but none of it made any sense. Finally, I was able to get one of my hands free. I grabbed hold of his hair and yanked his head back. "What the hell are you saying?" I asked.

  He looked deep into my eyes. "I love you," he said, "but I love her more." And that was when I felt it—an icy, quick sting in my side. His hand clenched into a fist against my blouse. The handle of something extended from his grasp. It dawned on me what he had done.

  He stabbed me.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but he slid his fingers from between my legs and shoved them down my throat. I bit down on his hand. He thrust the knife deeper, lifting me off the ground. I writhed and kicked, but I couldn't catch my breath, and my strength drained away. Both of my shoes came loose and I heard them clunk against the rooftop. I was helpless, unable to scream or fight back. I just stared at him, trying to make sense of what was happening. The sound of rain pitter-pattered against my shoes, but when I looked up at the endless onyx sky, no moisture fell upon my face.

  He pulled his hands back and I slumped to the ground. Slick crimson dripped from the blade—it was my blood. My shoes were sprawled out next to me in a pool of urine. What I'd thought was the sound of rain was me wetting myself. My mind screamed out in silence, but I felt nothing, aside from the gut-wrenching anguish that radiated through me.

  A crackling, gurgle sound filled my ears each time I tried to breathe. Ray knelt next to me and I waited for him to say something. Tell me why, or tell me he was sorry. "You're not the first other woman I've ever loved, and you won't be the last," he said. He wiped the knife handle off on the bottom of my skirt and that was it. He stood up, and looked down at me one last time. He walked toward a vent with spinning fan blades inside, slid the knife between the slats, and dropped it in. In a casual stride, he went back over to the door, opened it, and left.

  Left me to die.

  ***

  Death is darkest of all places, and in that desperate, final moment before it became my lasting abode, I prayed again to see angels. Creatures of cold and darkness came through my dying eyes—hissing shadows of death with no sympathy or conscience. They whispered white noise I could now comprehend. I knew they came to garner my soul.

  The dim light at the end of the dark tunnel appeared again. Everything human about me dried up that instant and became sheer, black ash. The shadow people led the way, and we floated upward to hover just above my lifeless body lying dead on the rooftop. We formed a circle like friends around a campfire. The shadowy figures still resembled those of humans, but they were composed of fine particles. Any motions they made caused the grains to spread apart then immediately coalesce again. They were fluid, black static mannequins and I had become one of them.

  "What am I to do?" I asked. My own voice unfamiliar to me.

  "You will know," they replied. "Follow what you feel. We will return when it is done."

  "When what..."

  And they were gone—vanishing up into the air the way ashes rise from a fire then disappear.

  Well, now what? I really didn't know. A car engine thrummed below. I moved in a flash toward the edge of the rooftop—amazed I could flee instantaneously.

  It was Ray in his Lexus, about to pull away. I moved back to the rooftop door and grabbed the handle. My shadow hand exploded into a trillion flakes of black ash then came back together when I moved it away. I tried again and again, but the same thing kept happening. He was leaving the parking lot. I knew I had to go with him. He did this to me—him! Once more I moved in a flash and dove from the rooftop. Suddenly I found myself in the passenger seat next to him. Not quite sitting, something mo
re like hovering. I reached out to feel the dashboard and my shadow hand disappeared into it. That could not be right. If letting me have my revenge was what the shadow people wanted, it would be impossible without physical touch. In a fit of rage, my black ash fingers became talons, and I lashed them out across Ray's face.

  "Ouch!" he yelped, swerving his car into oncoming traffic. Horns blared, lights flashed. He pulled back into his lane, vigorously rubbing his cheek. He moved his hand away and glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. There was an angry red gash in the side of his face. So—it seemed my touch affected him after all.

  I wanted to kill him, but the timing felt off, and the others said I would know when. As hard as I tried to muster the will to strangle him, it wasn't there.

  He drove with a smug smile through quiet suburban neighborhoods. Every street lamp we passed under buzzed exceedingly loud. Faint, ambient sounds of the neighborhood were amplified and echoed. At last, he pulled up a driveway with short white picket fences on either side. The house was a nice brick Tudor style. Exactly the kind I imagined he lived in. Bicycles and kids' toys appeared hurriedly abandoned out front. The garage door opened and he pulled his car in. Before going inside, he looked himself over. He touched the gash on his cheek. His hand jerked back and he swore in pain. He looked down at his fingers and they were clean. Apparently satisfied with the rest of his appearance, he entered the house.

  I rose through the roof of his car and followed him in like a mist of fine ash—a disembodied shadow. The garage entrance led straight into the kitchen. He emptied his pockets, and tossed his keys on the counter. He walked down a long narrow hall. Near the end, he went left through an open doorway and turned on a light. I came in behind him and hovered in the darkest corner.