Dark Deaths_Selected Horror Fiction

by William Cook

  Wearing nothing but the underpants he’d slept in, Harry attempted to stand on his leg once again. Even the slightest movement drove the pain in his leg home like a nail as he attempted to get his work trousers on. The whole side of Harry’s leg was fire-engine red apart from the mass of rotting brown pus in the center of the hideous wound. The sight of it made Harry throw up violently beside his bed, each convulsive discharge of vomit causing electric currents of excruciating pain to shoot up the side of his shivering body. Whatever nourishment that was still in Harry’s body was now gone as was his strength. Harry collapsed back onto the unkempt bed and lapsed into unconsciousness as the phone on his cluttered bedside table started to ring. Meanwhile, Gertrude had emerged from under the bed, looking slightly healthier than Harry thanks to the remaining morsels of sausage that she had discovered and consumed two days before. She sniffed suspiciously at the smelly remains of Harry’s stomach lining on the floor and extended her pink tongue.

  Harry slowly came ‘round the next morning with the sound of the telephone incessantly ringing in his burning ears. He felt slightly better, slightly stronger but could not move one side of his body which had now taken on a purplish oily tinge, the pain was also unbearable and if the phone had not been on the side that wasn’t infected Harry may never have picked it up.

  “Hello, Hello is anyone there,” said the far away voice on the other end of Harry’s telephone.

  Harry moaned barely able to focus his sight let alone talk.

  “I’d like to talk to Harry Worz, if he’s there.”

  All Harry could do was utter a dull moan.

  “Is that you Harry?” asked the voice.

  “Well if it is, I am calling from the printing company . . .”

  “Hello, Hello . . .” enquired the annoyed voice again.

  Harry did not say anything.

  “I am ringing,” said the voice, “to give Harry Worz notice that his employment with our company has been terminated due to his inexcusable absenteeism.”

  Harry, with his last remaining strength, ripped the phone from the wall as he collapsed into unconsciousness again, shuddering into a faint with pain and fever as he lay in his bed naked and alone, retreating in and out of his dying dreams . . .

  Harry dreamed that he was trapped in a big cave that was filled with smoke or fog. Screams and howls could be heard in the dark while big-breasted naked women appeared from the mist, their eyes were glazed and white like boiled eggs. Harry gazed as if hypnotized as they gyrated and danced before him and then they began to attack him, their arms elongating into sharp spears of flesh and bone as they stabbed at him. He tried to run but was rotted to the spot as they continued their frenzied attack, the wounds from the stabbing causing blood to gush from his body until blackness consumed his dream. All he could feel was an unbearable twisting in his stomach. A mixture of hunger and pain that was overwhelming and then the blackness gave way to visions of his past. His life seemed to flicker before his eyes like an old movie – scenes from his childhood and then time with his mother and then Gertrude his kitten, who he knew that he would never see again . . . and then there was only pain, then a blinding white light, then eternal darkness.

  Mrs Welch picked up the telephone and called the police. For the past five days she had been troubled by her neighbor’s strange behavior, ever since she had seen him standing naked, staring out his window. She’d also witnessed him standing in the middle of the road, yelling and screaming – a car had nearly run him over right there outside her window and then there was the horrible wailing cries all night and now nothing. Quiet as a mouse for the last three days, she recounted to the concerned police officer on the other end of the phone.

  “I think . . .” she said, “that you had better send someone over straight away!”

  When the police turned up at Harry Worz’s unit, nothing looked out of the ordinary outside the property, but with a little investigation an officer happened to look through Harry’s bedroom window. What he saw made the young recruit horribly ill, his face went as white as a ghost,

  “Sir, I think that you should have a look at this,” said the officer to his commander.

  The senior officer looked and immediately gave the order to gain access. Once inside it was confirmed, Harry Worz, was no more.

  When Mrs Welch across the road was questioned and made to retell her story about poor Harry’s behavior by the police officer, she was naturally (for one such as herself) quite intrigued by how he had died. She immediately regretted asking, for what the young recruit let slip made Mrs Welch throw up her lunch.

  “Well,” he said, giving into her persistent questioning, “we at first thought that Mr Worz had been horribly murdered, due to the horrific nature of his death . . .”

  A morbid shiver of fascination seemed to travel the length of Mrs Welch’s stooped body.

  “ . . . but then,” continued the officer, “we identified wounds that we thought were the result of some kind of terrible infection, which we presumed killed Mr Worz.”

  “Oh, do go on,” urged Mrs Welch with gleeful anticipation.

  “It was only after the autopsy,” said the officer, “that we discovered that Mr Worz had actually expired by asphyxiation.”

  “Yes, but what does that mean? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?” Mrs Welch nearly yelled.

  “Well” the officer went on despite being annoyed by Mrs Welch’s morbid curiosity, “essentially, he choked to death”.

  “All those horrible injuries and he chokes!” exclaimed Mrs Welch, “Alright then officer, what did my crazy neighbor choke to death on then?”

  “His kitten,” said the officer in disgust, as he turned and walked back to his patrol car. Mrs Welch cupped her wrinkled hand over her mouth as she began to throw up, but managed to get inside before the neighbors saw what she was doing.

  Night Walker

  I decided to walk to her house. It was a beautiful night – early spring evening, the stars were out and the three-quarter moon was on the rise. Once past the main city streets it wasn’t long before I was walking through the suburbs. There was a certain electricity in the air: the fresh smell of the season, the suburban dew-covered lawns and shrubs leaking oxygen and life into the dark atmosphere, the hustle and bustle of people arriving home from work and the smell of TV dinners wafting through the neighborhood . . . I had spent the better part of an hour getting ready to see Lucille. That afternoon, I left work early and stopped in at the barber’s for a new stylish cut that made me look younger than my forty-three years. I then purchased the expensive clothes that I was now wearing from an upmarket menswear shop on High Street – a striped V-neck cotton-poplin shirt, slim-leg stretch-cotton chino trousers, a pair of suede brogue boots, and over the top I wore a double-breasted wool and cashmere-blend pea coat. All up, my ensemble cost me the better part of my total savings, but it was worth it. The new clothes made me look younger and combined with the suave hair-cut I now looked perfectly acceptable. I made a mental note to throw away the folded-up page torn from last month’s GQ magazine that still rubbed against my thigh in my trouser pocket. The barber had smirked when I unfolded it and showed him the picture of the debonair model dressed in brogue boots, chinos and a pea-jacket and said “make me look like that!”

  It had only been a year, but it felt like a lifetime ago when Lucille had shown me the GQ page while we were in the obstetrician’s waiting room. “You’d look good in that,” she’d said, just before we entered the office and the saccharine doctor informed us that we were to have a ‘still-born’ child. Understandably, Lucille was devastated as was I. The next month went by in a blur with two more hospital visits, a ceremonial burial in the backyard under the Oleander tree, and Lucille’s announcement that she ‘never wanted to have children.’ Her moods switched from the happy-go-lucky girl I fell in love with, to a brooding and depressed shell of her former self.

  As I walked and thought about her, I felt an inescapable sadness that seemed to make the cold nigh
t even colder. I pulled the lapels of my coat tightly together and buttoned them securely to ward off the cold night air. My mood improved with each step as I focused on the positive things about our ‘fresh start.’ The new living arrangements had been working out well after an initial uphill battle to where we were now. Lucille ‘needed space’ so I had moved into a small apartment in town, ten blocks from the suburb where we had bought our house before we got married. Her depression abated and her personality flourished once more and it seemed as though what we had done was the ‘right thing.’ Right as our decision may have been, my own loneliness threatened to consume me and I found myself in a perpetual state of nostalgic longing for our relationship and the happiness we shared before Hope’s death. That’s what she called the tiny fetus that we buried in the back yard – ‘Hope.’ Whatever hope our relationship had of surviving the ordeal, seemed to have died with the miniscule prenatal human. But now, things were starting to look up.

  I kept walking – two more blocks to go and I’d be there. The cold night air was thick with frost and I was glad that I had invested in a woolen coat. I dug my chilled hands deep into the warm pockets and pictured Lucille’s beautiful face in my mind. I smiled as I continued to walk, thinking of what I was going to say to her and whether this time she’d be receptive to my romantic inclinations. The last occasion of our meeting she’d hugged me and told me that she still loved me, although she had put a caveat on her statement by following it with an assertion that while it was genuinely ‘love,’ it was not the same as before. At that point, I took what I could get from her. Anything was better than nothing.

  One more street to cross and then the house was just one block away. A corner-store and a gas-station perched on the corner of the street and another busy road linked the area to the city at one end and the freeway at the other. The cross-road intersection was usually bustling with traffic as people came and went with their urban explorations, but tonight it was unusually quiet, save for the occasional delivery truck or bus making its way between the freeway and the city. The street lights flickered above me as I waited at the curb for a bus, with a handful of commuters aboard, to pass. I looked up the street and saw the pedestrian crossing and thought that I should really use it more often, but the thin alley-way on the opposite side of the street proved a remarkably useful short-cut through the small park and out onto the road two houses down from our Lucille’s, house. The street-light flickered once again and then died with an audible ‘pop.’ The street fell into blackness as I crossed the asphalt onto the grass verge and then down the alley-way and through the empty park. A swing creaked eerily as a breeze played among the trees and the playground equipment.

  I stood in the shadows of the alley-way exit and adjusted my appearance, unbuttoning my collar and styling my hair with a cold hand. I took a deep breath, smiled at the night and stepped from the shadows into the well-lit street. I approached the front door, a flood of memories washing over me as I summoned the courage to knock. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should perhaps come back at a prearranged time. Lucille had always told me to call if I intended to visit, but she had also told me before how much ‘spontaneity turned her on.’ So tonight, I thought I’d try my luck. I looked down the side of the house and saw that the living room lights were on. I could hear noises from inside the house – a combination of soft music and voices – and figured she was watching television. But then I heard the laugh. A distinctly male laugh, followed by a girlish giggle.

  I followed the path around the side of the house to the living room window; the blinds were drawn but not quite. Through a gap I saw her on the couch, locked in the embrace of a young man thankfully dressed in trainers and sweatpants but bare from the waist up. Lucille was intently caressing his muscular chest and pecking kisses across his thick neck. I stepped away from the window. Like corpses being bull-dozed into a mass grave, my thoughts tumbled through my mind into a very dark space. Anger swelled up inside me so that I felt fit to burst.

  My hands trembled as I turned down the path and back out onto the deserted road. I breathed deeply, trying to calm my nerves, but nothing could shake the rising tide of nausea and rage welling up inside me. I doubled-over and violently retched into the neighbor’s rose bushes overhanging the fence, scratching my face in the process. The dull yellow street lights flickered up and down the cul-de-sac and dimmed, as if someone had turned a dial, then finally were extinguished. The crescent descended into a shadowed realm as I looked up, wiping my chin with the back of my hand, and stared at the dark sky. The stars were gone and the moon had disappeared behind a wall of low-lying thick clouds, uplit subtly by the faint light from the city in the distance.

  The weather grew decidedly grim as the trees and shrubbery along the crescent rustled with the rising wind. Droplets of rain began to darken the footpath with blood-like spatters. My breath fogged in front of me and my teeth began to chatter as the temperature dropped rapidly. I cast one last look at the house and decided what I must do before entering the dark mouth of the alley-way.

  I walked slowly through the shadows, hearing nothing except the roar of regret and rage in my brain. In a tantrum I tried to rip the child’s swing from its frame in the park but only succeeded in splitting my skull open with the flailing chain. I fell to the ground like an enraged child and pummeled the wet grass with my fists until I tired and rolled onto my back, the damp ground soaking my new pants and expensive coat. I lay there staring at the black sky as the rain fell down upon me. My thoughts twisted and turned in my sore brain, a migraine now permeating my senses and forcing me to take stock of my situation. I groaned and stood, brushing grass and mud from my clothes before walking the remainder of the alley and back out onto the street. A car tooted its horn somewhere in the distance and a siren wailed in accompaniment. I could see the glow of the city up ahead, silhouetted with the jagged urban skyline. I focused my efforts on returning to my apartment as I crossed the street, the lights from the corner store and the gas-station on the corner the only immediate signs of life.

  Standing at the curb, I decided to call a cab and head into the city to drown my sorrows. I patted down my jacket and trouser pockets but couldn’t find my cell phone. Realizing that I must have dropped it in the park I turned and stepped back out onto the street and that’s when the pizza delivery van knocked me off my feet. I heard nothing as I turned back onto the street, all I remembered was a sudden flash of headlights and by then it was too late. I lay crumpled on the wet asphalt, my broken face plastered to the cold surface as I watched the red tail-lights flare as the van skidded to a halt. The spring cold instantly disappeared and my body crackled with a weird energy. The surface of my skin buzzed with what felt like hot electricity, trying to push its way out of my flesh from the inside. My migraine had gone, replaced with a wet heat as I read the yellow signs covering the black van:

  ‘Devil’s Food Pizza – crusts to die for.’

  A bubble of blood burst between my cracked teeth as I tried to open my mouth. I felt my jaw flap limply as my tongue tried to form words in the back of my twisted throat. I watched helplessly as a pair of white tennis trainers bounced towards me. I felt tugs at my body, at my clothes, as he pulled my wallet from my jacket pocket. I watched the trainers’ slip-slop back to the van, the taillights glowed red again and then it slowly drove off down the street and disappeared around the corner into the shadows. I shuddered against the hard ground, my face slick with warm blood. I tried to move but could only manage to shift my weight before collapsing with the pain, each movement triggering clicks of burning agony as my fractured bones bit into sinew and nerves. I pushed every ounce of strength and energy I had into one last effort to move off the road before another vehicle hit me. Instead, the pain and darkness of that night enveloped me and I succumbed to an abyssal gloom.

  I found myself standing before the full-length dress mirror in my apartment – slightly contorted, my face ashen and my eyes glazed and bloodshot, but nonetheless com
plete. Unbroken. The only signs of any accident were a few grazes, the scratches on my face, from the rose-bush when I threw up on the neighbor’s fence, and an ugly bruised welt on my forehead where the swing chain had struck me. The clock on the wall read ‘seven thirty.’ I pulled my pant leg cuffs down over the suede boots and stood straight, running the comb through my freshly-cut hair. I splashed some of the cologne on my neck that Lucille had bought me for our anniversary two years ago. Squinting, I leaned towards the mirror and carefully picked a small piece of gravel out of my cheek and proffered a wink at my reflection. I felt good, I was finally going to see Lucille. She had offered the suggestion of a reconciliation and I was damned if I would let the opportunity pass me by again. Despite some dried blood, a large tear in the rear and a ripped elbow, I shrugged my shoulders into my expensive pea jacket, and headed out into the night.

  It was cold out but a perfect evening for a walk through the city and into the nearby suburban fringe. With each step closer to my destination, I began to feel alive again as my thoughts filled with the promise of Lucille. A dog barked behind a fence as I passed. In the distance, sirens peeled off into the night. The wafting smell of cooked dinners floated through the suburban streets as I kept walking. All the while imagining Lucille. I smiled as I continued on towards her house, mentally practicing what I was going to say to her. The street-lights flickered above me as I passed beneath. Despite the occasional movement of a cat or a stray commuter returning home from work, the streets were empty of life. The night was absolute, deathly chilled and silent – asleep almost. Nothing stirred as I traced my passage along the pavement except for a lone black pizza delivery van, crawling silently through the neighborhood streets as if hunting for prey. I thought little of it and continued my walk, buttoning the lapels of my blood-stained coat tightly together to stave off the cold night air, thinking all the while of nothing but Lucille.