The Howling Trilogy

by Gary Brandner

  He was right about my Mum, though. She was beautiful in a kind of film star way, all blonde hair and curls like Marilyn Monroe or Jean Harlow, and even at that age she’d lost none of the glamour. Sure, Dad was boring, but I like to think she ended up with him because he was a kind man with a kind face. In the end she did ‘do better’ as my Uncle would have called it, running off with owner of the bookies. She ended up with money, but was as miserable as sin. And, we suspected, the guy beat her. While my Dad wallowed in a tiny flat, getting drunk until his liver just gave up the ghost. But that’s another story, and long after this one.

  I first saw The Monster one Bank Holiday. Dad was working overtime, but Mum had the day off. I was an only child, so had to amuse myself a lot of the time. That day I was getting under my mother’s feet while she was trying to watch some musical on TV.

  “Christopher Edward Warwick, do you have to make such a row!” she finally bawled. I couldn’t really blame her: I’d turned the whole house into a spaceship and was busy piloting it into the deeper reaches of the Galaxy, battling one-eyed aliens with veiny skins.

  She sent me out to play with the other kids, but that wasn’t really my thing. I ended up wandering off to explore what the locals called ‘The Cut’––I never understood why, because it didn’t look like anyone had cut the grass down there in centuries. Maybe it was because a pitiful excuse for a canal ran the length of it like a wound. Here I could pretend that I was in the jungle where giant snakes and lions lived, and down by the water there were man-eating crocodiles (in actual fact you were more likely to find used condoms and fag ends).

  I didn’t go down there very often, not many kids did, but on that day I wandered further than I meant to––up a winding path to a small iron bridge crossing the canal. There I played Pooh sticks, something I hadn’t done since I was six or seven, dropping twigs in the water on one side of the bridge to see which would come out first on the other side. Not much of a game, but the snakes and lions appeared to be hiding that day.

  There were only a handful twigs lying around, so when these were gone I went into the undergrowth to find more. I hadn’t gone that far in when I found the den. It was covered up with foliage; quite well hidden beneath the trees, a hollowed out bit of green with earth for the floor and the remains of a fire. It was empty. I figured it must have been the older kids that had made it, looking for a private place to hang out.

  At that age caution always fell a close second to curiosity, so I dropped the twigs and went inside. There was a strange smell, a toilet smell. I was about to leave when I spotted something towards the back, pages scattered.

  And a glimpse of something that, until today, had been forbidden.

  I crept further in, certain that the older kids had been here because they’d left behind an Aladdin’s Cave of porn. The magazines were screwed up, the pages creased––yet the pictures of half naked women posing for the camera were a revelation. At that age girls in my class were just pests, there to torment, but this was different. These weren’t girls, they were women, and they were showing me parts of their bodies willingly, opening up as easily as I was opening the pages.

  I began to feel stirrings, a pleasant sensation as I ogled the photos. Then something fell out of one of the magazines. A piece of paper with handwritten scribblings all over it. I bent and picked it up, but could barely make out the spider scrawl. All except one phrase, written time and time again: ‘They watch, and they wait.’

  I frowned, then checked more of the magazines. I hadn’t gotten very far when I heard the snapping of twigs I’d left in the entranceway. I spun and saw my monster. It was big, hairy, and its skin was almost black. It wore an old trenchcoat that strained tight at the shoulders. When it opened its mouth to speak I saw rotting teeth inside. Drool spilled onto its beard as it gargled, “Did they send you?”

  I shook with terror. My erection shrank away and I dropped the magazine, a couple more of the handwritten sheets slipping out onto the floor. His wide, staring eyes followed them down. He covered the distance between us easily, grabbing hold of my arm––so hard I thought it might break. He towered above me. “They did, didn’t they, boy.” It wasn’t a question. His fetid breath almost caused me to pass out.

  I shook my head, unable to get any words out.

  “Yes. They’ve sent a little spy.”

  “P-P-Please don’t hurt me,” I spluttered.

  He yanked my arm. “I’m not going back!” he shouted. “You hear me… Never.”

  I nodded. He seemed pleased that he’d got through to me. Then he drew me in so close I could see the insects living in his beard. “You go back, you tell them that, boy,” he growled.

  He let me go. I gaped, but suddenly my natural survival instinct kicked in and I ran out of there. I plunged through the undergrowth, catching my head on the branch of a low-hanging tree. I fell, hard. Shaking my head, then casting a glance over my shoulder, I got up and began running again.

  I felt the wetness at my temple, but didn’t stop. I ran up that path, never looking back in case the ‘monster’ had decided to give chase.

  I’m not going back… Never…

  When I got home my mother said, “For God’s sake, Chris, whatever have you been doing?” She took me into the kitchen, washed the cut on my head, then put some antiseptic on it. When she asked me again what I’d done, whether it had happened playing, all I could do was stare, opening and closing my mouth.

  “Christopher Edward Warwick,” she said a final time, “you tell me what happened, right now.”

  “M-Monster… c-canal…” was all I could say.

  “You and that blasted imagination of yours,” she said. “Go to your room!”

  When the truth emerged a day or so later, she felt pretty bad. I heard that some of the older boys had stumbled upon my monster and gave him a good kicking before telling their parents, who then called the police. He’d gone by the time they got there, but it was all around the estate about what had happened: that some pervo nutter had been living rough down by the bridge.

  Mum hugged me when she when found out. She never said anything, but she knew. Knew the monster had been real.

  I know better now––he wasn’t really a monster at all. Just someone who knew the truth, and it had sent him insane.

  ‘They watch and wait’ he had written.

  They watch and wait.

  Two

  When I wake again, the blindfold is gone.

  I open my eyes and look around. The bars are still there in front of me, I’m still shackled by the hands and feet, but the bonds are looser, my hands apart. I can move a little, maneuver myself up into a sitting position. I don’t ache as much now, either. I wonder how much time has passed since––

  Then I remember. The person burnt alive. It’s gone now, the cage empty, the body taken away while I was unconscious.

  “Welcome back,” says the man who’d told me to be quiet, hanging in his own cage like a canary. He’s wearing what look like sweatpants and a top, the kind of thing you’d find people dressed in at a country health spa.

  “We thought you were out for the count,” adds the woman who’d also spoken to me before. She’s perhaps in her late twenties, with a slender frame––or what I can see of it beneath the smock she’s wearing. Her dirty-blonde hair is matted with sweat; looks like it hasn’t been washed in a couple of weeks. “How do you feel?”

  “How… how do I feel?” I snap, a mixture of confusion and anger.

  The man throws me a vicious look. “Christ, can’t you keep it down? I told you before.”

  “I’ll keep it down when somebody tells me what the fuck’s going on,” I yell at him, returning his glare with one of my own. I pull at the chains, testing their length.

  “If you do that, they’ll just make them tighter,” the woman warns.

  “Who will? And who did that…” Words fail me so I simply point across at the empty space where the charred body had once been.

  “
You ask far too many questions.” This comes from another speaker, his voice richer, deeper. I turn and see yet another of the cages behind. In it an olive-skinned man sits crossed-legged, dressed like the first guy: in loose clothing. A prisoner’s outfit.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Who the fuck are you?”

  “That’s two more,” he says.

  I make to get up, about to grip the bars of the cage.

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” the olive-skinned man tells me.

  “Well you’re not m––” Too late I see the wire curled around the bars, and no sooner have I touched the metal than I feel the electric shock. It ripples through my body, not strong enough to put me out again, but enough to blister my hands. “Shit!”

  Is that what happened to the person in the cage in front? I wonder. Did someone just leave the current on––running along the bottom as well––long enough to set fire to the poor sod inside?

  “I did warn you,” says the man, his dark brown, almost black, eyes fixed on me.

  As I rub at my palms I take in the room: rectangular, the walls smooth. There’s a red tinge to the lights, giving the space the look of a photographic dark room. Nothing to give away a location. Just a single door.

  “Where am I?”

  “Another question,” comes the reply from my neighbor.

  “What do you expect, Kavi?” says the woman. “He’s bound to be a little disorientated at first. We all were.”

  “And do we know any more now than we did then?” asks the man she named. Nobody rushes to answer.

  Instead the woman introduces herself to me. “I’m Jane,” she says, touching her chest, then thumbs over at the other man. “That’s Phil.”

  “Philip Hall,” he announces proudly, like it means something.

  I shrug. “Chris. Chris Warwick.”

  “Welcome to the party,” says Phil snidely.

  “So nobody knows anything about this? About why I saw someone just get fried right in front of me.”

  “You saw that?” Jane sounds shocked.

  I nod. “Managed to drag my blindfold down a bit. I saw enough.”

  Phil gives a half laugh. “Resourceful little devil, isn’t he? That’ll get you a one way ticket to hell around here, kid.”

  “This is Hell,” says Jane with complete conviction.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask, though it’s Phil who butts in.

  “Longer than you,” he says.

  “Then you must have seen who’s holding us.” I round on him. “Who did that?”

  Nobody says a thing.

  “Oh, come on! This is ridiculous.” I stand, almost putting my hands on the bars again. “You can’t just kidnap a bunch of people and then––”

  “Why not? Happens all the time abroad,” Phil comments. “Places where his lot come from.” He nods over at Kavi.

  The dark skinned man smiles. “With one breath you betray your ignorance,” is his only remark.

  “We’re all ignorant in this place,” Phil replies.

  “But how did you wind up here?” It’s another question, and I expect Kavi to say something about that, but he doesn’t. This time he asks me one of his own.

  “How did you?”

  It suddenly strikes me I don’t know. I had thought I’d been out on the town or something, and just got completely smashed. But I couldn’t remember a thing about the previous night, the previous day (what time of day is it anyway?), let alone how I ended up in this cage. “I… I think I was drugged.”

  “Well, of course you were drugged!” barks Phil. “It’s how they get you here, and put you inside these things.” He points at the cage.

  “But why? Are they after money?”

  “Looking for a ransom, that what you’re thinking?” Phil grunts. “And why exactly would anyone pay money to get you back, Chrissie-boy? Loaded, are you?”

  I hang my head. “No.”

  “Me either. How about you, Jane? Fitness instructor’s pay suddenly gone up by a few million in the last month or so?”

  “Piss off,” says Jane.

  Phil grins wearily. “Wish I could, sweetheart. Really wish I could.”

  “So what do you do?” I enquire out of mild curiosity.

  “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”

  “He works in an estate agents,” Jane informs me.

  “Thanks a bunch,” Phil grumbles.

  “What about you?” I ask Kavi.

  “Aw, who gives a shit,” Phil breaks in before he can answer. “That was in the outside world. In here you’re just another plaything.”

  I look again at the empty cage. “Why did they do that? Burn that person up, I mean.”

  “Nick,” Jane says quietly, her eyes glistening. “His name was Nicholas.”

  “They don’t need to give a fucking reason,” Phil explains. “They’ll just come in, douse you with petrol and strike a light.”

  “Phil, please,” begs Jane.

  “Especially if you make a fuss, draw attention to yourself,” he carries on, ignoring her. “Just like Nick did.”

  It was Jane’s turn to glare now, at Phil. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He was just––”

  “He asked one too many questions,” Kavi points out, looking at me.

  Phil nods in agreement. “Every time they came in, he was at it. What the fuck did he expect?”

  “Come in? Hold on,” I say, switching the subject, “so you have seen the people holding us then?”

  Phil considers how to answer that one. “They don’t exactly let us get a good look at their faces.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will,” Kavi promises.

  “Nick didn’t do anything wrong,” Jane continues, as if the conversation hasn’t moved on at all. “It wasn’t because of that––they just enjoy it.” Without thinking, her hand goes to her neck and now I see the scar. It’s a fresh one, still quite raw. “They enjoy hurting us.”

  “But why? What could they possibly gain from this? What do they want?”

  “That,” says Kavi, “is precisely what Nick wanted to know.”

  Want to keep reading?

  Check out the rest of the story here:

  PAUL KANE - PAIN CAGES

  * * *

  Great books from:

  BOOKS of the DEAD

  BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (VOL. 1)

  BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (VOL. 2)

  BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (VOL. 3)

  CLASSIC VAMPIRE TALES (VOL.1)

  BEST NEW VAMPIRE TALES (VOL. 1)

  MATT HULTS - HUSK

  MATT HULTS - ANYTHING CAN BE DANGEROUS

  JAMES ROY DALEY - TERROR TOWN

  JAMES ROY DALEY - 13 DROPS OF BLOOD

  JAMES ROY DALEY - INTO HELL

  JAMES ROY DALEY - THE DEAD PARADE

  JAMES ROY DALEY - ZOMBIE KONG

  GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING

  GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING II

  GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING III

  PAUL KANE - PAIN CAGES

  TONIA BROWN - BADASS ZOMBIE ROAD TRIP

  Thank you for reading this book!