Horror Library, Volume 4

by Bentley Little

  He knew Dahlia had only played because of his money, that she only stayed because she believed he had more.

  She didn't know he'd ran his business straight into the shitter. Or maybe she did. Maybe she thought she could draw and tongue a few more drops from his assets—the houses, the cars, the properties—like an ape sucking marrow from a bone.

  Looking at her now, Job could honestly say he felt nothing, save the sudden desire to put a bullet between her close-set green eyes and then, after having another dance with the reel and rod, eating a bullet himself.

  He kneeled over the gut-hooked fish. Thought it was the one that'd been stealing his bait all day.

  "Got greedy, didn't you, you? Got yourself in a nasty fix. Well, me and you both," he said and cut the line.

  He held the bass over the copper-hued water, and as he released it an osprey lunged skyward from the water's edge. It let out a single, shrill cry of alarm; its feathers rasped like fine-grit sandpaper, drawing Job's attention to the bow.

  "Job? Are you listening to me? I said: Stop rocking the boat!"

  Dahlia was slathering an outrageously pink paint onto one of her perfect little toenails. Diamond light ruptured from the darkening bank at her back. And she flew—violently, instantaneously backward, screaming as she was pulled into the tree line. She was there one moment. Then gone. As if she'd never been there at all.

  The bottle of pink nail polish rolled across the deck, emptying its contents.

  "Dahlia?" Job asked, his voice breaking, his memory of her, of the event, already beginning to crack apart under the influence of the light.

  FROM DARK VOIDS, AN ANGLER OF MEN

  "Dahlia!" Job screamed, and pushed to his feet.

  He stumbled into the underbrush, bellowing her name, running, he knew, toward the culmination of his destiny.

  A host of wildlife streamed from the forest, running away from the source of the flaring light. A raccoon. A family of possums. Squirrels skittered through the trees, chittering in confusion. A herd of deer appeared as if conjured, parting around Job in near-ghostly silence, mouths covered in wild froth, black eyes rolling with fear and madness. But, abruptly as the exodus began, it ceased, the woods stilling momentarily in the wake of the deer. The sudden hush hung from the trees like ornaments of promised violence. Job cocked the Smith & Wesson; mopped sweat from his face that had little to do with the clinging humidity. Saplings snapped like gunshots, like bones breaking, and something massive careened off a pine, shaking its thirty-foot length. Job smelled musty fur and sweat and old shit, and a black bear charged past him, grunting, at an all-out sprint. Job screamed, almost discharged the pistol into his foot, but ran on, as much to find the source of the sapphirine luminance, and Dahlia, as to put distance between himself and the bear.

  His heart was not in this any longer, now that he knew the truth of himself and the situation, but he was close. He could feel it.

  His sense of self-loathing and what little pride he had left drove him on.

  There's still time to do something right.

  By the time he came to the dooryard of the old river shanty, there were no more living animals. But from the trees that bordered the clearing there hung a riot of mutilated remains. The dooryard was soaked with blood, scattered with organs and husked carcasses. Some fresh, most putrid. Oddly, there were no flies.

  Tommy the Mullet, a kind of local hermit who Job recognized almost immediately, stood over the corpse of the deer Job had seen taken. Tommy the Mullet was ripping the skeleton free of the hide and flesh with his bare hands. He was naked. Every inch of him mantled in gore.

  "Oh. . ." was all Job could manage.

  Tommy's head snapped up and he half-flinched; Job had startled him. Tommy opened his mouth as if to speak, and blue light flared from between his cracked lips.

  Looking into that horrid brilliance, Job felt as though he'd been struck by lightning. His muscles pulled taught. Tighter, tighter, tighter, until bones threatened to crack. He lost all sense of who he was, what he was doing. He smelled fire and thought it was his brain sizzling, frying in the skillet of his skull like ground beef in a pan. He smelled pink and wondered that he could smell such an outrageous color. His motor functions scrambled and he crumpled to the blood-soaked mud of the clearing. Insensate darkness bore him away and Job wondered no more.

  ***

  He woke from dreams of heat, lightning, and rivers of blood filled with dying fish. He was lying in mud and at first he thought he'd slipped from the boat and knocked himself unconscious. When Job looked at his hand, though, it was caked with soiled red earth.

  He was not outside, however, but lying on the dirt floor of the river shanty.

  Job took a shallow breath and rolled gracelessly onto his side. Dahlia was lying next to him. She moaned, the lids of her eyes fluttering like moths in the semidarkness. An alien hand—mottled like old leather—was clamped over the back of her skull and she shuddered, once, violently.

  Job flopped onto his back like a fish. It was everything he could do to keep from screaming.

  Nothing in his life could have prepared him for what he'd seen this day, least of all this: Tommy the Mullet crouched over Dahlia, but he was no longer strictly a man. Tommy's face lay slack around his shoulders; hung down his back like the hood of a sweatshirt. Teeth and rubbery gums the color of liver stuck to his bare chest. The pink skin that had covered his hands and forearms dangled in opaque shreds from his elbows, revealing the leathery flesh of something inhuman. But the worst thing was Tommy's new face, emerging from the humid darkness like a nightmare escaping the ethereal prison of subconsciousness—an amalgamation of a cock and a turd, littered with hundreds of tiny yellow-gold eyes like brass buttons. It had no real mouth with which to speak, only a wide, greasy slit in the center of its grotesque head, possessed no nose, or ears, just those tiny brass eyes, filled with radiant hunger.

  Using his palms and heels, Job scrambled away from it, shoving to his feet in a single motion.

  The dappled thing that wore Tommy the Mullet like a sweat suit garbled something utterly alien, but in his mind Job understood it clearly: Fat with corruption. . . sweet with it, suckling-man. . .you make good sport.

  Job was naked, stripped of his clothes, but this didn't slow him. He thought briefly of his pistol, of Dahlia, but these were obligatory reflections produced by fear and guilt, and they were eclipsed by a baser need. His animal instincts were in full control now. Not bothering to search for a door, Job slammed into the wall of the shanty in a dead sprint, breaking through the slimy wooden boards without concern for injury. Dread without fathom had seized him and he was incapable of anything but pumping his legs; incapable of truly caring for Dahlia, or her fate—that which had carried him to this hell on earth in the first place.

  It was only then that he realized Dahlia was screaming. Calling his name.

  Don't, Job! Don't leave her! he thought. But his legs were still pumping. He was still running.

  "Fuck her," he said with each rusting breath.

  "Fuck her."

  "Fuck her."

  He wondered if he'd ever really been a good man, or if it mattered? He wondered at the pointlessness he'd created.

  He ran beneath the mutilated, hanging corpses, the crimson mud of the dooryard squishing between his toes. Light flared behind him, his muscles threatened to seize once more, but he snarled and waged past it.

  While rational, conscious thought was obliterated by this final flare of light, his subconscious mind was a sudden well. He was sorry for the candy bars he used to steal from Old Pap's Grocery in Astor when he was a kid; he was sorry for asking Annette Stuart out in high school, screwing her, then dumping her; he was sorry he never finished his architectural drafting degree; he was sorry for fucking around on Ali, for betraying her and their children; most of all, though, true to his deepest self, he was sorry for coming out on the river today. He knew it was not Dahlia's fault his marriage was in ruins, that this situation had bee
n created. He knew it was not God's fault he was here, at this place, at this time. But he cursed them both anyway. Despite the shallow sorrows of his superego, or because of them, Job needed to place blame outside himself to keep his legs pumping. He knew he should stop, should turn around, so that Dahlia's death was not one more regret with which to torture himself in moments of later mania, but he could not.

  A nearly invisible line of filament lashed at Job. He turned, slapped at it, opened his mouth to scream. . .and the line streamed down his throat, into his bowels. Hot barbed pain transpierced him; stabbed and hooked in his guts. He was pulled from his feet, jerked through the scrub, through soft needles of low hanging pine branches. He grabbed fruitless handfuls of them. Screamed around the strange line that snaked into his bowels. Blood, warm and vital, ran from his mouth, down his neck and chest.

  Job realized then, the things you did in this life, good and bad—but mostly the bad things—set off chains of circumstance that would, inevitably and with vicious finality, add up to the sum of your end. And man's only claim to significance was made through those gestures of love, mercy, and high morality he was afforded to act upon each and every day.

  Job's culmination was complete. His chance for meaning had passed.

  Ennis Drake gives witness to the wasting of our souls. He opines for the loss of the best of American sensibilities. He talks to himself about the heat-shimmers that haunt the peripheral of waking life; half-glimpsed antagonists born of a culture of rightful fear; shadows of enemies that become fully realized monsters in his dreams. He sees, regrets, ruminates upon, and carries these swatches of blackness, exorcising them onto the white of the page as often and as fast as he can. But, as fate delights in, dear Reader, the collective fears of a collective consciousness are an unexcisable cancer.

  *stop*

  Ennis Drake lives in Florida, where the sub-tropical climate further exacerbates his psychosis (actually, this is a lie; the beaches are nice, the stiffer drinks come with an umbrella, and the beer is cold). He approves this message, but cautions that it is just a test.

  —WHAT WAS ONCE MAN

  by Michele Lee

  It's a moonless night, and three of us sit in the dark basement of an abandoned house. Meghan. Rick. And me. We found each other by chance, hiding in a boarded up grocery store not too far away. We stayed together after that, for what little protection an extra set of eyes on the lookout offered. The stairs were the first thing we destroyed when we found this safe spot. Some structure in the house above had collapsed when we did that, and whatever it was made the basement hatch impossible to move.

  There are tiny windows set into the stained concrete walls that let in the light during the day. The street lamp outside helped us see at night until something out there broke it. None of us complained, because in a way it's better if you don't have to always see how trapped you are.

  It's starting to stink down here. It's been three days, and with no bathroom.

  Despite the stench, I'm hungry.

  ***

  Meghan

  My dad started touching me when I was eleven. I'm not looking for pity. You said you wanted the brutal truth, so that's where it started; when my dad first touched me.

  It went on for years. They train you, you know. To put up with it. They call it 'grooming'. Other predators can tell when you've been groomed. Around thirteen my uncle started giving me the same looks. On my fourteenth birthday my brother took a long grope while my mom wasn't looking, so I ran away.

  I didn't think they'd care. But they did and it only took a few days for them to find me. It was in a public place, but that didn't thwart my father's temper.

  A friendly, round woman in scrubs with a hospital ID tag that read 'Laura' was buying me a meal at a burger joint, and stayed with me while I ate. I was so hungry I didn't care. I figured she'd want to talk. Maybe she knew somewhere I could go, someplace where they'd understand why I'd left, and give me a way to get off the street.

  Laura never got a chance. My mother came in, her keys dangling from one of her fingers. I'd always loved playing with the key chains she collected. Funny that I recognized her keys first. Our eyes met across the room and I begged her, silently, to let me go. Pretend you didn't see me.

  She ordered a soda, then turned her back on me, going to the machine to fill her cup. I thought I'd made it. I thought, stupid me, that she'd helped me. Less than two minutes later my father walked in the door, eyes fiercely scanning the dining room. He saw my mother, who pointed right at me. Laura was awfully startled when I burst into tears.

  "Are you all right?" she asked. She reached out to me. I pulled away.

  "No—"

  And he was on us. His hand circled my arm, fingers tearing into my flesh. He jerked me out of my chair. I couldn't fight back or even land on my feet. He flung me to the floor, my drink and what was left of my burger and condiment-smeared wrapper going down on top of me. I didn't get right back up. Hopelessness welled up in me and I couldn't get my body to do anything but go limp, give up. I wanted to fight, but I'd been groomed.

  "Don't you dare lay your hands on her!"

  Laura's voice was pure steel. I'll always remember, because I'd never seen anyone talk to my father like that. But Laura stood up, vastly outsized, not caring, her eyes blazing. She must have never experienced the intimidating influence of a fist or garden hose. She couldn't know and still stand there as she did.

  "Butt out, you fat bitch. This is between my daughter and me. It's none of your business."

  "Someone call the cops," Laura yelled. Her gaze darted to the teens working behind the counter, to the older couple eating two tables over. My father moved toward her like a rolling storm. Fury masked his face. I opened my mouth to scream.

  "I am taking my daughter out of here."

  I forced myself up, to my knees. "I don't want to go with you."

  It should have been a scream. It should have had the force, Laura's open defiance. Instead it spilled out from my lips, weak and palsied. Laura bent over to me, her hand out.

  My father stepped forward and kicked me hard. I wasn't looking his way; I was reaching out to Laura. I rolled backward until I hit the metal base of the table. Something gave. For a moment I just thought it was my resolve, crushed under the sheer violence of my father's heart. But it was my spine, right below where it met my skull.

  Everything went silent. I was aware of something, I cannot remember what, but I was there, with thoughts and feelings beyond the darkness.

  Then I woke up in the basement of my home. I was lying on my side, staring into the worried face of my father while someone else's hands moved up and down my bare back, checking my spine.

  "Oh, thank God. You're okay."

  "She'll be fine," a rich female voice said behind me. It sounded like hot, sugary coffee, rolling around me and through me, as if I'd swallowed it. "She'll be as good as new."

  "Good." He turned to me, concern in his face and voice. "Meghan, I need your help. There's a cop, and you're going to tell him what really happened in the restaurant. How you slipped and fell. You're going to show him how you're all right now."

  I found myself nodding. It confused me. I remembered wanting to defy him. I remember the crunch of my neck, the terrifying lack of pain, the darkness.

  He helped me stand, allowing me just a moment to glance at the beautiful black woman, her waist-length hair a nest of perfect braids and a smile on her voluminous lips. She started packing supplies into a duffel bag, pausing only to give me a small nod.

  Upstairs he led me to the living room, where a young, handsome man in a police uniform waited just inside the door. "Here she is, officer. I'm not sure how much you'll get from her. She's a little retarded."

  "Meghan. . ." the cop started.

  I found myself nodding.

  "Meghan, can you tell me what happened at the restaurant?"

  "My dad came to get me." I looked into the cop's eyes, my body alive with fury. Did he have the same loo
k as Laura, or was that just boredom in his eyes? Did he have the power to get me out of here? Could I tell him the truth and just walk out to some place safe?

  "What happened when he got you?"

  I opened my mouth to plead for help.

  "I fell on the floor. I got all sticky."

  I sounded like a three year old, all short sentences and simple words. There was no chance to think, no amount of mental screaming brought out the truth. The cop asked and the answer my father wanted fell from my mouth.

  "Meghan, there was a lady there who said that your father kicked you. Did he kick you?"

  "Oh, no." Words vomited themselves up and out of my chest. Foul words. The lie came from somewhere else, certainly not me, no matter how much it sounded like me. "My daddy doesn't kick me. She must be a liar."

  My eyes turned to my father, but my head wouldn't. He was relieved. The bastard had successfully saved his own skin, and I hated him for how he pulled these things off.

  They put me back into the basement. I was being stored like holiday decorations. They didn't need to feed me. They didn't let me go to school anymore, but they did take me out occasionally. My mother refused to even acknowledge my presence, while my father and brother poked me and laughed about it. Sometimes with more than a finger. And once in a while the dark street doctor would come in to check on me. She'd look me over, shake her head as her fingers traveled across my bruised skin.

  Then, one day she took my chin in her hand, she stared right into my eyes. "Are you in there, girl?" she asked in her mocha voice.

  Without permission to speak I could only managed a gurgle. It was the first noise I'd made out loud in a week. I could scream in my head, curse and rage and howl, but without permission I was mute.