Forgotten Souls

by Rooster Smith

  “Look, it was your fault; you should’ve been looking where you were going. Get off the car and just go home!” she yelled, and moved her finger towards the button to close the window.

  This angered the child, and he violently banged on the steering wheel, which sent the airbag flying out. Sarah screamed as the large white pillow formed in front of her and tried to push it down, which made her yelp in pain from her injured arm.

  “Now look at what you’ve done!” she shouted. “Go on; just get out of here before I do something I’ll regret!”

  There was an uneasy silence, but then the boy suddenly grabbed Sarah’s head and pushed it into the inflated airbag, holding her down with uncanny strength.

  Sarah’s face was embedded in the pillow of air, and her arms flailed about as she tried to grab the child’s hands to escape her peril. Her muffled screams could barely be heard as she fought for every breath of air. Her head was turning slightly from side to side, but the child had a good grip and her face was still forced hard into the airbag.

  In blind panic, Sarah managed to reach around to the back of her head and pull at the evil boy’s fingers to try and prise them off. This added challenge seemed to please the urchin, which made him smile, showing some dirty, blackened teeth. He then plunged his fang-like teeth into Sarah’s hand, and the muffled yells of his victim grew a bit louder. The demonic boy bit harder and harder and moved his head from side to side, and a loud cracking was heard as some fingers were ripped off and streams of deep red blood shot up and splashed all around the interior of the car and onto the boy’s face. The stubs where the fingers once were poured with blood and horrible loose flesh hung from the gaping holes. Sarah moved her painful hand back onto the airbag, which turned the white pillow red, and the evil brat stood up outside the car, still holding the doomed woman’s face deep into the airbag.

  The boy chewed Sarah’s severed fingers for a few seconds then spat them out onto the ground. With an evil grin he pushed her head deeper and harder into her airbag, and the near-dead woman began to shake. Her feet instinctively kicked out, smashing into the pedals, dislocating her ankles and twisting them both in a gruesome and repulsive way. The bones of her feet were sticking out through the skin, and the boy saw a last chance to inflict more pain on his prey.

  He reached down and grabbed one of the protruding bones and started to twist and turn it, and with each cracking twist it made Sarah convulse and shake even more in agony. Her end was near. The boy let out an evil chuckle, and with one last thrust of her head and pulling of bone, Sarah’s body became rigid. Then it relaxed and was still; she suffered no more.

  Her arms flopped down by her sides and the boy released his grip. He stood up and let out a disappointed sigh, knowing his evil pleasure was over. The Entertainer then walked up and stood behind him and lovingly put his hand on his offspring’s shoulder.

  “Well done, my son,” he said in admiration at the boy’s evil work. “Well done.”

  The Entertainer then removed the King of Clubs playing card from the ribbon around his hat, but as before, the same card remained in the hatband. It seemed like there was an infinite number of cards at his disposal.

  He placed the card on the back of Sarah’s head, still embedded in the airbag, turned and walked away, followed by his loyal young servant. They walked to the bushes at the roadside and vanished into them, leaving the horrendous sight to be discovered by some unlucky person who would happen to stumble upon the gruesome scene.

  Randoms

  The next afternoon at the police station, Josh, Maggie and Steve were trying to piece together the details of the strange deaths to see what they could discover. There were pictures of the deceased pinned on a large board on the wall with bits of paper with notes on them which were all relevant to the case. A constable knocked on the door and walked in.

  “Here’s that info you needed, guv,” he said to Steve, handing him a piece of paper.

  Steve nodded as he took the paper from him and the constable left the room. He read the note and pinned it onto the board, then turned to Josh and Maggie, who were both sitting at a table.

  “Well,” Steve said with a sigh, “we have a firm connection to go with our King of Clubs card.”

  He sat down with his two friends, and an excited Maggie asked, “Well, what is it, then?”

  Steve looked at Maggie, then turned to Josh and said, “It seems more of our victims used to go out with each other when they were younger.”

  He got up and walked back to the incident board. He read the latest note and announced to Josh and Maggie, “Louise used to go out with Tony, Alan used to date Michelle, and Sarah, our latest death, was George’s girlfriend when they were teenagers. Michelle and Alan were still friends but the other four just lost contact, as you do over the years, and hadn’t seen each other for over fifteen years or so. This has to mean something, but what?”

  An uneasy silence filled the room as they all tried to get some inspiration from somewhere. Suddenly the silence was broken.

  “Could it be jealous ex-partners?” Maggie suggested.

  Steve shook his head. “No, that just doesn’t sound right.”

  There was a short pause while they all thought for more ideas, then Josh blurted out, “I know – it could be an old friend with a grudge.”

  Maggie nodded, but Steve disagreed.

  “Yes, but that would only work if they all had the same friend. No, it must be something else.”

  They sat there, defeated and devoid of ideas, when Maggie suddenly shot up out of her seat.

  “Children!” she shouted.

  “My God, Maggie,” Josh sighed “You scared the living daylights out of me.”

  He sighed again as Steve replied to Maggie, “Children – what do you mean?”

  Maggie went up to the board and pointed to some of the pictures. “Don’t you see? A witness said he thought he saw a young boy in the seat of the roller that killed George, but he couldn’t be totally sure and Louise’s husband told us he heard her groan the word ‘child’ just before she died.”

  Maggie scanned the board again. “Look here,” she exclaimed, “the passer-by who found Sarah swore he saw a youth near to where her car was, but when he got to Sarah the boy had gone. There were the fresh footprints of a child in the field where Michelle was found too. It seems the potential sighting of children at the scenes is only fleeting, but why?”

  She then sat back down and whispered, “I also felt the evil presence of what could have been a child in the bank just after Alan’s death. This has to be it.”

  Steve nodded in agreement. “You could be on to something, Maggie, well done.”

  Josh chimed in and voiced his concern. “Yes, but where have these children come from and where did they all go?”

  “Well, we can’t find out too much in here,” Steve stated. “Come, let’s go into town and investigate further and see what else we can find out.”

  They all agreed and left the room to see what else they could discover.

  ***

  Elsewhere, in an unnaturally cold and misty field a few short miles out of town, ghostly music could be heard and the sound of evil laughter and song rang out through the air. The field was full of apparitions and spirits of people long gone. Mixed in with the crowd were the Entertainer’s children, and the Entertainer himself was walking through the flock.

  A rock band were performing on an old wooden stage near the edge of the field, and the words STATE OF EXIT were written in blood above them. This was clearly the name of the band, who were belting out loud music to a lively and rowdy audience as the blood gushing from their name flowed out further and further and started to run out onto the boards of the stage.

  With a closer look you could see that the four band members were all chained together and they were in a tortured, zombie-like state, but they did sound great, which is
probably why the Entertainer chose them as his personal entertainment.

  The drummer was banging away the beat and blood splashed up from the drum skins, soaking him and his drums in a deep red coating. The bass player kept the rhythm, but as he played the skin was being burnt off his fingers by the red-hot strings of his guitar. The lead guitarist strummed a blistering riff, but screamed in pain as the guitar lead around his throat tightened with every note he played.

  The singer was also playing backing guitar and belting out the words to a song about being a zombie, dead inside, but his words were strained as his guitar was on fire and he was singing through his agony. However, the whole band seemed perfectly at home despite their pains, performing to their spectral audience and they fitted in superbly with the ghostly surroundings. Their music seemed to make the crowd even more noisy and boisterous, but the Entertainer’s children were bored. They all walked up to the Entertainer and looked at him. They never said a word; they didn’t have to as the Entertainer knew what they wanted.

  “Ah, OK, my family,” he said as he spread out his hands to them. “I sense your frustration and boredom continue.”

  He pointed a bony finger and added, “Go and have some extra fun.”

  The ghostly children all beamed and ran off in different directions, disappearing into the dusk.

  The Entertainer turned to the rock band and shouted, “Play on, louder!”

  This made the crowd roar and cheer, and State of Exit continued to blast out their rock music.

  ***

  Two of the evil children, a girl and a boy, were now in another field where they saw a local farmer on his combine harvester. They smiled at each other and ran through the crops towards him.

  The farmer saw them and furiously yelled at them, “Keep away, there are dangerous things here!”

  But the children ran closer and closer. Suddenly the sinful girl tripped and fell into the rotating machine’s blades. The farmer screamed and he saw blood and body parts fly out from the front of his harvester. An arm and a leg were thrown through the air and blood-splattered lumps of flesh were hurled all around.

  “No!” he yelled as he turned off the engine and climbed down. “I told you both to keep away!”

  The evil boy just stood there and watched as the farmer went to examine the blades to see what was left of the poor child. He was stunned as he saw the bloodied remains of the girl still lodged in between the blades of his machine. He couldn’t mutter a word due to the horror of what he had just done. He raised his hand towards the girl’s body to try to remove her, and as he touched her head the child’s eyes shot wide open and gave out a cold, black stare. This made the farmer fall back in shock, and he just sat there on the ground, looking at her in disbelief.

  “No, that’s impossible,” he uttered to himself.

  He shook his head, thinking he was imagining it all, and slowly raised his gaze back up to the girl, but she was still looking straight at him. She was entwined around the sharp rotor blades of the wheel with her remaining arm and leg mangled in the wreckage. Half of the top of her head was missing and her intestines were flopping out from her stomach.

  Suddenly her stare became more intense and she started to laugh at the poor farmer. It wasn’t a quiet, nervous laugh but a loud, evil one, and she didn’t stop. She just laughed and laughed at the farmer, oblivious to her own plight. The farmer rose to his feet in shock; he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but this time, the girl was gone.

  Before he could say or do anything, the machine’s engine started up and the large bladed wheel began to turn and spin again. He looked into the cab and saw the boy sitting in the seat.

  He frantically shouted to the child, “Get down from there and turn it off!”

  The boy didn’t respond, and then the farmer heard a noise directly behind him. He turned around, and to his horror he saw the young girl standing there, fully intact.

  The farmer opened his mouth and took in a large breath, but he didn’t know it was to be his last one. The wretched girl lunged at him and pushed him backwards into the blades of the combine harvester. There seemed to be a slight pause as the doomed farmer’s eyes widened with fright, but then it was all over. He was ripped to shreds on the blades and his arms and legs were flung over the field as the rest of his body was chopped into small pieces of gruesome flesh. Blood and guts rained down and his bloody, sliced-up head was tossed out and landed at the feet of the young girl, who placed a Joker playing card on the forehead as the King of Clubs card was saved exclusively for the Entertainer’s revenge related deaths and not for random ones. The boy then turned off the machine and the two diabolical reprobates walked away hand in hand.

  ***

  Not too far away in an old farmyard along the coast road was a blacksmith’s Forge which was still in use, and Ashley, the blacksmith, was working away, hammering on the anvil. He was making some horseshoes, but he didn’t seem happy with the one he was working on. He walked over to the grinding wheel and turned it on. He started to grind away at the horseshoe when he became aware of someone behind him. He spun around to see an ashen youth standing there dressed in rags.

  The youth quickly and violently grabbed Ashley by the head and pushed his face onto the still-spinning grinder. Ashley screamed in agony as sparks flew out from the wheel and his face was ripped to shreds. There was a sickening crack as his nose broke and was bent to the side. He was just about to pass out when the youth let go and Ashley fell to the floor, clutching his hot, smouldering face. The demonic boy looked around the forge to see what else he could do to the damned blacksmith.

  He saw hammers of different weights and size, sharp chisels, chains and a seven-foot-long trough full of red-hot ashes. This pleased the urchin, and he easily picked up the pained forger and threw him into the burning embers.

  Ashley thrashed about in the hot ashes. He was being burnt alive; it was like being tossed into a volcano. As he fought to escape the trough, the fiery embers and ashes were tossed up into the air in a whirlpool of fire. Suddenly, the evil boy grabbed Ashley and pulled him out of the burning trough, throwing him to the ground. Ashley couldn’t move as he was in too much agony. His body looked like it was covered in a fiery coat of hot sand and his blistered skin was melting off with the intense heat.

  The youth then spread out Ashley’s arms and legs, and with Ashley now spread-eagled on the floor, the ghastly boy got four horseshoes and, with the help of a lump hammer, pinned Ashley’s arms and legs firmly to the ground. Ashley was now at the mercy of this demon child and through his pain he managed to open his eyes, but he soon wished he hadn’t.

  The youth was standing over him, holding the heavy anvil high above his head, and Ashley knew what was to come. He tried to wriggle free, but he was firmly pinned by the strong iron horseshoes.

  With his white teeth now showing through his burnt-away lips, Ashley managed to mumble, “No”, but it was to no avail.

  The wicked degenerate stood directly over the prone blacksmith’s head and dropped the anvil. The heavy iron block smashed and crushed Ashley’s skull as if it was made of glass. Pieces of bone, sinew and brain just managed to shoot out before the anvil embedded itself firmly into the floor. A red corona could be seen on the floor around the base of the anvil containing blood, tissue and a detached eyeball; it was a horrible, gruesome death. The boy then placed a Joker card on top of the anvil and happily walked out of the shed, knowing that his work was done.

  ***

  All of the Entertainer’s children returned to the field and each of them looked happy; there was no telling what evil deeds they had just completed. The Entertainer then shouted, “The show is now over – go back home to Midway!”

  State of Exit stopped playing and then got violently pulled off the stage by a very large, muscular woman who led them away, and as they walked off they stumbled, still
chained together and pained from their tortured performance. The crowd turned and walked towards what was the back of the field where they all faded out of sight, leaving the Entertainer and his clan all alone.

  “Come, my children,” he said lovingly to them. “We still have lots of work to do.”

  Booth

  Later that same evening, Jimmy was walking down the main road of Mablethorpe. He was a bit bored, and for some reason he felt the strong urge to go into the arcade to have some fun. He looked all around the arcade and saw the usual games and slot machines. He was thinking of what to go on when his mobile went off. He took it from his pocket and read the text message; it was from his wife and she wanted to know if he had any romantic ideas for their anniversary. Jimmy phoned his wife, and smiled as she answered.

  “Hello, it’s me,” he said. He nodded in response to what his wife was saying and then continued, “It’s not until tomorrow, and yes, I do have some ideas so don’t worry.” Jimmy nodded again. “OK, dear, I’ll see you later.”

  He put his phone back into his pocket and sighed. “There must be something I can do,” he muttered to himself. It was obvious that he didn’t really know what to get his wife for their anniversary.

  He looked around the arcade and his gaze stopped at the artist’s booth. It was one of those booths that you sat in and your photo was taken, then the image was automatically drawn in the style you chose – chalk, comical, sepia etc.

  Jimmy’s face lit up. “That’ll do – I’ll get her a funny picture of me done and put it in a frame; she’ll like that. She always says I look stupid.”

  With his mind made up, Jimmy walked up to the artist’s booth and sat down on the stool. He drew the curtain for privacy and began to choose the style of picture he wanted. He put some money into the slot as the machine requested and sat there waiting for his picture to be taken.

  Suddenly he felt an evil presence and had the feeling he wasn’t alone, so he slowly looked down to the floor. He was shocked to see a young boy and girl sitting by his feet. They looked about eight years old and they were both very pale and grey.