Servants of Darkness (Thirteen Creepy Tales)

by Mark Edward Hall

  The old man grunted. “Global warming,” he said adamantly. “We’re upsettin’ the balance with all these goddamn automobiles, factories, chemicals, and coal plants. It’s man’s greed, I tell ya. It’ll be the undoing of civilization.”

  John smiled through a mouthful of mashed potato. “Don’t worry, Pop, I’ll bring over a case of it tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Herb said going back to his dinner. “That’d be good.”

  “Lord in Heaven,” Lillian said when they were getting ready for bed. “Herb, you spent way too much time in the sun today. I warned you. Let me put some cream on that burn for you.”

  Herb knew he hadn’t spent a lot of time in the sun, nevertheless he allowed Lillian to spread sunburn cream over his arms and face. As he drifted off to sleep he was thinking about the ozone and the balance of nature and somewhere deep down inside of him he was dimly aware of an odd craving.

  As usual, Herb was up at five AM. Although it had been ten years since the cattle had gone, old habits died hard. He went to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of orange juice just like he did every morning, but after the first sip he didn’t want anymore of it. It tasted bad. He dumped it down the drain.

  He went outside to another brilliant sunrise. He walked immediately to the barn and climbed the ladder to the loft. The three empty BugShot cans lay on the dusty gray floorboards where he had discarded them. All the dead wasps were gone. From the rafters above him he heard a low, steady hum. He looked up. The honeycombed nests he’d sprayed the day before had all grown to the size of catchers’ mitts and the wasps milling in and around them were the size of hummingbirds. Herb picked up one of the empty cans and inspected it, looking for some hidden fine-print he might have missed the day before. He found nothing. Placing the nozzle against his nose, he pressed the plunger and inhaled deeply. A fine mist shot up into his nasal passages and was carried instantly to his brain. The euphoria was immediate and breathtaking, but didn’t last nearly long enough. Herb pressed the plunger several more times but the can was empty. He threw it onto the floorboards and picked up another one. Empty also. He tried the third can and threw it away in frustration.

  He left the barn and went back into the house.

  “Everything all right, Herb?” Lillian asked after seeing the distressed look on his face.

  “Just fine,” Herb said crossly.

  “You can’t fool me, Herbert Pellem, I know you too well. What’s wrong?”

  “Wasps!” Herb spat. “Didn’t get ’em all yesterday. Wonder what time John’s coming with that case of BugShot he promised me?”

  “After work I imagine.”

  Herb took off his misshapen hat, hung it over the back of his easy chair and sat down. The top of his head was a relief map of reddened scalp, brown liver spots, a few forlorn wisps of white hair, and several small red welts.

  “Herb, have you been stung?” Lillian said inspecting his pate.

  Herb, dimly aware of a dull throbbing up there said, “No!”

  “All right, Herb, all right. But it sure looks like it to me. And you’re all red. You’ve been spending too much time in the sun.”

  “No I ain’t, Lil, now shut up and leave me alone.”

  “Have it your way, Herb,” Lillian said and waddled into the kitchen.

  Herb sat in his easy chair for the remainder of the day. Every so often Lillian would peek around the door jamb at him. He wasn’t doing anything, for god’s sake, just sitting there staring into space. This wasn’t at all like Herb. She was afraid he’d been stung and the poison had affected his mind. His face was too red. She wondered briefly if he was having a stroke. She wanted to mention it, but Herb was too damned ornery, and she was afraid he’d snap at her again. When John arrived she’d tell him, maybe he could talk some sense into the old fart.

  John arrived at 4:30. He opened the trunk of his car and took out a cardboard carton, carried it into the house. Lillian turned her face up to be kissed. “Where’s Pop?” John asked.

  “In the living room. Don’t know what’s gotten into him. Uglier’n a hornet. Maybe he’ll talk to you.”

  John shot his mother a puzzled look and went into the living room. Presently Lillian heard low, muffled voices. She peeked around the corner, saw that Herb and John were talking and inspecting a can of BugShot. Herb seemed fine now. She went back to her kitchen business feeling better but still uneasy.

  Later Herb and John left the house, John carrying the case of insect spray. They went straight to the barn. Lillian watched them through the window. John, tall and straight, broad shouldered, a full head of thick, dark brown hair. Herb limping beside him, hunched, frail, thin as a post, his misshapen old hat perched precariously atop a preternaturally red skull of a head. A sudden and terrible fear went into her heart. She tried to dismiss it. It wouldn’t go away. She went back to the business of preparing supper.

  Herb wouldn’t eat. It was the first time in years. As he grew older his appetite diminished, but he always ate something. Lillian worried. Herb was acting mighty strange.

  After pushing his plate away he grabbed his hat and headed for the door.

  “Where you going, Herb?”

  “The barn.”

  “Heaven sakes, what for? You and John were just out there.”

  “Wasps!” Herb barked in his gruff old-man voice. “Didn’t get ’em all.”

  Before Lillian could reply the screen door had slammed and Herb was gone. She waited five minutes, and then followed. Before she had her hand on the first rung of the ladder she knew something was terribly wrong. She felt it in every fiber of her being. From the loft above she heard a low steady buzzing, like a hive of riled honey bees. Lillian ascended slowly, cautiously. She was a large woman and it had been years since she’d climbed up into the loft. Halfway up she was already out of breath and her heart was threatening to leap out of her chest. She stopped, waited. The buzzing persisted, now louder. She began again, hand over hand, slowly. The first thing she saw when she poked her head up through the opening was Herb’s misshapen hat. It sat atop an unrecognizable stock that was completely saturated with giant wasps. An oily substance leaked from the stock and ran like honey over the wasps and onto the floor, which was littered with empty BugShot cans. The creatures were frantically devouring the stuff, like bees on a honeycomb, and they seemed to be growing larger as they ate. In the next horrifying instant Lillian understood what she was looking at. The unrecognizable stock was Herb. She dimly felt warmth at her crotch as her bladder let go. She screamed, her foot slipped on the rung but she caught herself just in time, hanging by her fingertips. When she finally managed to get her feet back on the rung, she looked up and the Herb-honeycomb, still littered with a thousand hummingbird-sized wasps, was shambling towards her. Between some of the creatures, she could see Herb’s open maw of a mouth with his few remaining teeth gleaming white within. The maw was moving up and down in slow motion, like a stricken jellyfish. “It’s good, Lillian,” it was saying. “So good. Try some.” The voice sounded bubbly, like it was being spoken from beneath water.

  Lillian screamed again and began descending the ladder. Three quarters of the way down she looked up and saw the Herb-thing getting on the top rung. The wasps were beginning to desert him now, and in their place a strange reddish-gray cocoon was becoming visible. She hit the deck running and didn’t stop until she was inside the house with the door locked. Her breath was rasping in and out of her lungs so hard she thought she might die of heart failure. Snatching the phone from the cradle she dialed John’s number. Betty answered. “Betty, oh my God,” she cried. “I have to talk to John, hurry. It’s Herb.”

  “Ma, what’s wrong?” Betty said to the hysterical woman. “Is Dad all right?”

  “No!” Lillian screamed, and as briefly as she could, told Betty what had happened.

  “Get in the truck, Ma,” Betty said. “And drive out to the plant—”

  “But—”

  “Don’t ask questions, Ma,
just do it. That’s where John is. He had to go back in to work this evening. I’ll meet you there.”

  Lillian hung up, found the keys and raced out of the house. The Herb-thing shambled slowly out of the barn. The thin stalk that separated the abdomen from the thorax was already taking shape. “So good,” it was saying in its bubbly under-water voice. “Sooo very good.”

  Lillian got in the truck and drove the nine miles to the chemical plant. Betty’s car was out in front. She raced in through the front entrance but the guard was not at his station. She moved further into the bowels of the plant until she heard a low steady buzzing. The plant smelled dimly of something sweet and intoxicating. Sort of the way the barn had smelled. She pushed through the door into the section where John worked, the place where they made BugShot. Machinery clanged and clattered, and at their stations on the aerosol assembly lines sat at least two dozen human-sized wasps turning out thousands of cans of BugShot.

  Horrified, Lillian backed away and fell against the door, her knees buckling. She was only dimly aware of being caught by someone. When she turned and saw who it was she began to moan and writhe. John was on one side of her and Betty on the other, except they were only half human. Their eyes were large and bulbous, small stalks protruded from their shoulders where the wings were forming and the stingers were already poking from their misshapen buttocks’. Their noses were still human though, as were the ears and mouths.

  “It’s good, Ma,” John was saying. “Here, try it, you’ll see.” His cloven bug-claw-hand came around from behind him and in it he held a can of BugShot. “A little larvae in the batch and see what happens, Ma. Everything changes . . . everything mutates . . .” Betty grinned rapaciously beside him. “Come on, Ma, Pop’s waiting at home for you. He’s building you a nice new nest in the barn.” The sound of machinery clamored in the background.

  Lillian was still moaning and writhing when John placed the can of BugShot against her nose and depressed the plunger.

  New Years Eve

  “Honey,” Sally whispered, reaching across the seat and shaking him. “Honey?”

  Kevin groaned as his head lolled first right and then left against the seat back. “Huh?”

  “Did you see that?”

  She knew he hadn’t seen it. He’d been sound asleep and snoring.

  “See? Wha’?”

  “I saw something run in front of the car and duck into the shed.” They’d just returned home from a New Years Eve party where Kevin had gotten totally drunk, it was late and cold and all Sally wanted to do was curl up under the covers of Kevin’s warm bed and get some sleep. But as she’d pulled into the driveway something had dashed through the beam of her headlights and run into the shed. She was so pissed. How many times had she honked on Kevin in the past few weeks to fix the latch on that door? Oh well, it was his house. He could do what he wanted. Now she could see the door blowing back and forth in the wind. She sat with the engine idling, headlights trained on the door.

  Kevin groaned again. “What did you see? An animal?”

  “I don’t know. Something. Maybe . . . somebody.”

  “What?”

  “I said I don’t know.”

  “You sleeping at the wheel?”

  “No!”

  “Probably . . . nothing.”

  “It was something, Kevin . . . looked like somebody all hunched over. Damn it, wake up. This is serious.”

  “I am awake.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  “Go in the house. Go to bed.”

  “No way. I’m not getting out of this car until you go in the shed and make sure there’s no one there.”

  “Damn.”

  “I saw it, Kevin.”

  “Okay . . . okay.”

  “Do you know anyone all hunched over who might sneak around in the middle of the night?”

  “Yeah, my demented uncle.”

  “Very funny.”

  “There’s nobody here but us,” he said. “Just you and me.”

  “I’m still not getting out of the car.”

  Kevin’s arm moved toward her. He put his hand on her breast.

  “Lay off, buddy.” She lifted his hand away. “Are you going to do something?”

  “I could think of lots of things.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Just a little.”

  “I’m about two seconds away from dumping you out and driving home,” Sally said. “You can spend the rest of the night alone with your demented uncle.”

  “There’s no one in the shed.”

  “Okay. Fine. I’m out of here.” She put the car in reverse and stepped on the brake. The car lurched. “Are you getting out?”

  “Hang on,” he said. “You can’t leave at this hour. We had plans.”

  “That was before you decided to drink half the booze at the party.”

  “Aw, come on, that’s not fair. It’s New Years Eve.” He opened his door. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “I don’t want to leave either, sweetheart.” She put the car in park and turned the engine and the lights off. The house was not even visible in the darkness. “Why didn’t we leave an outside light on?”

  “I thought we did.” He opened the glove compartment and was rummaging around inside.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think?” He came back with a flashlight, switched it on and shined it in Sally’s eyes.

  “Hey.”

  “Woops, sorry. He lowered the beam and zeroed in on her breasts.”

  Smiling, she shook her head. “Letch.”

  “Guilty.”

  “Why don’t you use your cell phone and call the police.”

  “Silly Sally. Why would the cops come all the way out here?”

  “Because there’s something or someone in the shed, maybe in the house. You don’t have a gun, do you?”

  “Just the forty-five caliber Johnson in my pants, baby.”

  “Kevin! It’s cold.”

  “Okay—okay. I'm on my way. Should be tracks.”

  “The ground’s frozen and there’s no snow, dummy.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  He stepped out of the car on unsteady legs. Sally followed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “You don’t think I’m staying out here alone, do you? Just go. I’m hanging on to your coattails.”

  The shed door was banging in the wind. He stepped inside and shined the light around the interior. She stepped in behind him.

  “See, no one here.” He turned and closed the door, locking it, tried the light switch. Nothing happened. “That’s funny?”

  “What?”

  “Must be why the outside light was off. Blown bulb.”

  He went to the door, took his key and unlocked it. “That’s even funnier.”

  “What?”

  “The key turned too easily.”

  “Damn it, Kevin, did you check to see if it was actually locked?”

  “No.”

  “Christ.”

  “Don’t worry, my demented uncle must have made a copy.”

  “Stop it, you’re freaking me out.”

  “I’m kidding, silly.”

  “Dick head.”

  The kitchen was warm. He flipped the kitchen switch. Nothing. “Christ!”

  “What now?”

  “Power must be out.”

  “But there’s no storm.”

  “Wind. These old lines are sensitive. Here, I’ve got another flashlight.” He rummaged around in the cupboard drawer until he came back with it, handed it to her. “I’ll go look for candles. Wanna come?”

  “No, I’ll stay here until I know the coast is clear.”

  “There’s no one in the house, baby.”

  “I wish you had a gun.”

  “I told you—”

  “Don’t even go there.”

  “Not to worry. I won’t need one. If someone’s in the house I’ll run like hell.”

  “Damn, t
his isn’t funny.” She picked her cell phone out of her purse. “I’m calling the cops.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” At the dining room door he turned and shined his light on her. “You can call the cops if I’m not back in half an hour.”

  “Cut it out, you asshole.”

  He hurried through the doorway. She heard his quick footfalls receding. “Shit, I don't like this. I’m coming with you.” She went into the dining room, shined the light around the interior. He wasn’t there.

  “Kevin?” she called. No answer. “Kevin this isn’t funny.” Gooseflesh exploded on her skin making her shiver.

  She heard more footfalls like someone climbing stairs.

  “It’s all right,” Kevin called. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Aiming the flashlight Sally entered the hallway. By the time she reached the foot of the stairs Kevin was gone.

  “Kevin?”

  She didn’t know if he’d heard her but decided not to call out again. No point in acting too needy.

  Sally stood motionless gazing up into the darkness. She could hear her own heart pounding in her ears. Sweat trickled down her back.

  She turned off the light to see if she could see Kevin’s light flashing around upstairs.

  Everything was dark.

  She heard nothing but her own breathing, her own pulsing blood.

  Silence was probably a good thing, she thought. If something goes wrong, I’ll know about it.

  She gripped the flashlight with one hand, the cell phone with the other. They were both slippery against her skin. She looked at the phone’s dial. It was black.

  She felt around until she found the on button, pushed it. The dial lit up and she could hear a dial tone. With another push of her thumb the light went out and the phone went silent. She sighed, dropped it back in her purse.

  “Kevin, I’m coming up.” No answer.

  I don't really want to go up there, do I?

  Sally began ascending the stairs, the beam from her flashlight trained at the top. When she reached the landing she heard a thump then a sound like a bowling ball rolling across the floor.

  “Kevin?” she called. “Is everything all right?”