In Your Face Horror (Chamber Of Horror Series)

by Billy Wells

  “We need gas. If you find us some, we’ll let you live,” Robert informed the men whose look reminded him of two deer caught in the headlights.

  “We got a five gallon can of gas at the house you can have. Just let us go. We were just foolin’. We never meant you no harm,” he pleaded.

  Robert ordered the men to drag the bloody corpse off the road and got into the truck with the two hillbillies. Darressia decided to stay in the car with her revolver and the doors locked while Robert went for gas.

  The hillbilly drove to a farmhouse three miles off the country road. After one of the men produced a gas can from the barn, Robert led them at gunpoint inside the house. He had one of the men tie the other to a chair with duct tape. After Robert was satisfied the man couldn’t free himself, he shot the other man in the temple, splattering his brains all over the kitchen wall.

  Two hours later, Robert was drinking beer at the rickety kitchen table with stacks of money piled on it. The man on the floor with half his skull blown off was beginning to make him queasy. Black cigarette burns covered both arms of the man tied to the chair. The pruning shears Robert had used to snip off two of the fingers on his left hand lay in a pool of blood on the table.

  “I believe you’ve told me all the places you hid the money you stole from the tourists you robbed and murdered. I should have known when I ran out of gas, our good luck would lead to putting more money in our pockets just like the fortune teller said. I guess I’ll be leaving now.”

  Robert went to the gas stove, turned on all four burners, and extinguished their flames. He lit a candle on a nearby table. The hillbilly understood what would happen shortly and started rocking and squirming violently in the chair in an attempt to escape certain death. Robert picked up a pot from the kitchen counter and walloped the man on both sides of his head, leaving him unconscious. He stuffed the money on the table and a treasure chest of diamond rings and other jewelry in a grocery bag and scurried from the house.

  He took off in the hillbillies’ truck with the bag and the gasoline. He’d barely started down the road when he heard the explosion and saw a burst of orange flame in the rear view mirror. He drove back to where he’d left the car and found Darressia sound asleep. After emptying the contents of the five-gallon can into the tank, he placed the spoils he’d taken in the trunk.

  After a brief discussion, they decided to return to New Orleans rather than proceeding to Biloxi. The fortuneteller had told them their son would be running for president, but hadn’t said if he won. They wanted to know the outcome of the election.

  Reaching their destination, they rented a room at a different hotel not far from the fortune teller’s shop and slept for several hours. After lunch, Robert noticed Darressia scratching her head with a bewildered look and asked, “What’s on your mind?”

  “If that fortune teller knew we were coming into a lot of money, she must have known what we did to that young man in the motel room to get it.”

  “We’ve been to fortune tellers plenty of times, and you never had a problem before,” Robert replied popping a mint into his mouth.

  “I had a weird feeling about this particular fortune teller. And what about those crazy things we saw in the crystal ball?”

  “The crystal ball wasn’t even working. It was just our imagination. When we came to, it was just a white ball sitting on the table.”

  “How could both of us fall into a trance at the same time? That’s never happened before. She’s not like the others.”

  ‘The spinning disc put us under,” Robert replied, lighting a cigarette.

  “Who knows what we might have said when we were under her spell. Maybe she knows where we stashed the money.”

  Robert picked up the phone and punched in some numbers. He listened and hung up.

  “Well?”

  “It’s all there. Take it easy, you’re giving me the creeps.”

  “We need to waste her, I tell you. She knows who we are and what we are. I know it. She’s dangerous I tell you.”

  “Settle down. Let’s see what she says about our son running for president and play it by ear.”

  After leaving the restaurant, they proceeded to the fortune teller’s parlor. The young woman disguised as the old gypsy felt the evil coming even before they entered the shop. She remembered the couple all too well when they took the two seats across from her.

  When she picked up the tarot cards, the look in Darressia’s eyes chilled her like a deadly cobra poised to strike. The man had a gun in his inside suit pocket. She tried to hide her trembling fingers as she placed two cards on the table. Any word she said could trigger a fatal attack. She had to take command of the situation immediately if she wanted to live.

  The gypsy switched on the memory disc. With each revolution, Robert and Darressia sank deeper and deeper into a trance. Within seconds, they were once again under her spell.

  Suddenly the white sphere on the table lit up and began to swirl inside the glass. Just as before, Robert found himself on a lonely road in the black, eerie forest. The wind howled like a hungry pack of wolves as the sun faded on the horizon. In the distance, he saw the same figure in black approaching with a black cape.

  “What do you see, Darressia?” Robert asked as he peeked out from hide behind a massive tree and saw the rider’s corpselike face.

  “I see the old woman pulling off her mask. She’s young and beautiful, and she’s placing a closed sign on the front door.”

  “Did our son become President?” Robert asked excitedly.

  ““She’s picking up the crystal ball.”

  “Yeah. Did you ask her about our son?”

  “She says we never had a son.”

  “The lying bitch!”

  Darressia words quickened with anxiety, “She’s driving a car up a mountain road, and she has the crystal ball.

  “Did we get married or was that bullshit, too?”

  “She says she made up everything she told us.”

  “The two-faced hussy!” Robert bellowed. “She never had a clue what the future would be. Wait ‘til I get my hands around her neck.”

  “She’s getting out of the car with the crystal ball.”

  “Is this another nightmare?” Robert said as a face full of bloody teeth peered at him from beyond the tree trunk.

  “She’s standing next to the guard rail looking down at the waves crashing into the rocks below. And there’s a sign and a machine where you rent binoculars.”

  “What does the sign say?”

  “It says, ‘Beware! Don’t get too close to the edge’” Darressia paused, then shouted, “There’s a helicopter with tourists scaling the mountain wall a half a mile below. Wow! It’s really breathtaking.”

  “Uh. Oh. She tossed the crystal ball into the abyss.” Darressia screamed.

  “Are we safe?”

  “We’re inside the ball!”

  Suddenly the vampire and the black forest vanished before Robert’s eyes. He breathed a momentary sigh of relief just before his body exploded in a shitstorm of blood and guts on a massive boulder along the windswept beach.

  After Robert and Darressia had crashed on the rocks, the young gypsy woman magically reappeared inside her shop. She opened a closet, extracted a new crystal ball from several others on the shelf, and placed it on the table with her tarot cards. She had never taken a chance to confront such evil before, but when she discovered the wealth these monsters had accumulated, she had made an exception.

  Picking up the phone, she transferred the twenty-three million dollars from Robert and Darressia’s account to her account in the Caymans. She had a nice nest egg, but she did not intend to close the parlor just yet. She would smile her crocodile smile under her veil and bide her time, telling fortunes for chump change, until someone like Oprah or Bill Gates stopped in to have their fortune read.

  * * *

  Werewolf On Broadway

  The receptionist finally called Marlowe to see Mr. Abramson, a promoter who h
ad orchestrated the careers of Elvis, the Beatles, and many other lesser mortals. After she escorted him into an expansive executive office overlooking Central Park, he took a chair facing the promoter and shuffled his feet nervously.

  “Mr. Marlowe,” Abramson cracked the ice, “I don’t usually meet someone without a track record, but a friend of a friend who I respect thought you had an act which has a lot of potential. Please elaborate.”

  “I know you are a busy man, and I’ll get right to the point. I am a werewolf. My idea is to have you set up a show on Broadway with a number of other acts, which will be a vehicle for me to display my unique talent to a packed house of spectators and make lots of money.”

  Abramson’s jaw dropped and he sat dumbfounded for a few seconds, and then with an exasperated look on his face, he picked up the phone to call for security.

  “I assure you I am not a crackpot. I am willing to give you a demonstration of my act on November fifteenth, which will be the next full moon.”

  The promoter paused with the phone to his ear and put the receiver back down.

  “Is this some kind of gimmick where you transform into a werewolf with smoke and mirrors? We both know that werewolves don’t exist.”

  “I don’t blame you for being skeptical, but I assure you there’s no smoke and mirrors,” Marlowe explained. “The act will be authentic. You are also wrong about the existence of werewolves. In point of fact, my father is a werewolf. The difference between the others and myself is that I don’t prey on humans. Except for the night of each full moon, I live a pretty normal life. I am confident that I am the only werewolf in existence that can make that claim.”

  “How are you able to avoid ripping people apart when the moon is full and,” he said melodramatically, “the wolf bane blooms.”

  “My father has sheltered me all my life from the bestial inclination to hunt and devour humans for food, which had been his unfortunate plight for two hundred years. Since childhood, I have adhered to his strict demands to avoid the curse. On the day of the full moon, I am placed in a padded cell that keeps me at bay, and I am served a bloody feast of raw animal meat to satisfy my hunger until my lust for blood and my transformation passes. A human who befriended my father did the same for him until he died.”

  Marlowe could see Abramson coming around and was actually surprised that he had not dismissed the concept entirely. It was likely that most nonbelievers would not entertain the existence of a real werewolf whatsoever.

  After pausing to collect his thoughts, he added, “My father was very fortunate that circumstances allowed him to acquire substantial wealth. This enabled him to hire professional bodyguards to provide for our captivity and feeding during each full moon.”

  Abramson looked at Marlowe, and although he thought his story defied any stretch of the imagination, he had the uncanny feeling he was telling the truth. He knew by his demeanor that he believed what he was saying, and if he wasn’t a complete mental fruitcake, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It was like finding another Elvis.

  Marlowe explained, “I got the idea when I saw King Kong on the tube a few weeks ago. In the movie, an American film crew, led by Carl Denim, captured ‘Kong,’ a giant prehistoric gorilla, and brought him in chains to New York City to be exhibited as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Every show was sold out until Kong broke through his chains and wasted a lot of ticket holders and most of Times Square. I can take Kong’s place as the Eighth Wonder of the World, and we can make millions.”

  “Millions,” Abramson repeated in a daze.

  The promoter rose from his desk, peered out across New York City, and watched the masses flitting about like ants on the streets below. He tried to curb his excitement and said as he faced Marlowe, “Look. It sounds good, but we need to schedule a viewing of your transformation before I proceed with anything. It’s sounds too good to be true, and if I can’t get my mind around it, how can I promote it?”

  “As I said, November fifteenth, which is next Friday, the moon will be full, and you can come to my father’s compound on Riverside Drive and watch me turn into a werewolf.”

  “How many full moons are there in a year?” The promoter asked.

  “Always twelve, some years thirteen.”

  Abramson was disappointed, but twelve sellout shows at Madison Square Garden was a big haul by anybody’s standard if he played his cards right. He thought of putting together some Cirque du Soleil–type acts, a rock group for the kids, and maybe the Rockettes for the old farts with Marlowe’s Werewolf transformation—the main event.

  The days passed, and finally November 15 came. Abramson and an entourage drove up in stretch limos and parked in the large circular driveway on Riverside Drive. The sun was fading on the horizon. It was about a half an hour before sundown. The chauffer went to the door and rang the doorbell, and a tall mountain of a man that looked like a wrestler answered the door and ushered them inside a large foyer with a huge crystal chandelier.

  “Follow me,” he instructed the group of eight and led them down a dimly lit stairway that led to the basement.

  In the room below was a huge cage with very large bars that appeared to be made of steel. Marlowe sat on the one chair inside the enclosure. A steer was tied to one of the bars in one corner of the space.

  Ten chairs were lined up in a row in front of the cage. Abramson and his group took a seat. There was an unpleasant smell surrounding the space like spoiled meat, and the hay that was strewn about the floor was clotted with blood and gore.

  A huge monitor on the wall showed the full moon rising in the sky from an outside video feed. A strain of creepy pipe organ music crept into the space from the speakers that were positioned around the cage. Marlowe’s face suddenly filled the monitor as the intensity of the soundtrack grew louder and the bass speakers shook the enclosure.

  Before their horror-stricken eyes, Marlowe transformed into a colossal hairy beast, half man and half animal. The eyes of the wolf man filled with ravenous hunger as he looked out at the party of eight. With all his might, he attempted to break free of the steel cage. The bars held. With no recourse, he pounced upon the steer and started tearing the animal to bits one limb at a time. The ferocity and the unbridled bloodlust were much more primitive than any film the spectators had ever seen. The vicious slaughter made Blood Feast look like a Disney cartoon. The smell and the splatter of blood that sprayed inside and through the bars caused all eight spectators to gag and vomit violently. After devouring his pray, the wolf man returned to his chair and watched the group outside the cage with such terrifying menace that the two women who had come with Abramson passed out from fright and slumped to the ground. After several minutes, Marlowe burped loudly and started to transform back into his human form.

  After becoming human once again, he picked up a blood-splattered robe, draped it around himself, and said to the group, “Wasn’t I fantastic?” Blood and gore was caked on his face, and slivers of meat hung from his incisors.

  Abramson gave him an affirmative nod as several bodyguards helped him to his feet and up the stairs to the outside. His entourage was splattered with blood as they stood in the driveway gasping for breath from the excruciating ordeal.

  By the next full moon, a magnificent production was staged at Madison Square Garden. The seating capacity for the show was 20,000 at $300 per ticket for the cheap seats and $2,000 for the seats directly in front of the stage. Four Cirque du Soleil acts, the Rockettes, and Kiss were the acts that preceded the main event, Marlowe-Werewolf on Broadway. All the tickets were sold out within a week, and the show was the talk of the entertainment world. Massive TV screens circled the stage in order for all in attendance to witness the carnage in what Abramson was advertising as “Horrorvision.”

  The spectators in the front-row seats were given “splatter coats” and damp hand towels to cleanse their face and hands. The entire audience was given plastic vomit bags for those who became queasy. Fresh air was pumped through the air conditio
ning units, and exhaust fans were twirling like helicopter blades to soften the stench of the bodily fluids during the show.

  As expected, the event more than lived up to the massive ad campaign. Many of the spectators passed out and had to be removed from the theater on stretchers. The police had their hands full with the unruly crowd that seemed to relish every shower of blood like they were seeing Gallagher, the comedian, splatter the audience with watermelon juice. The front-row yellow splatter coats were soaked in scarlet, and people were slipping and sliding in the unbridled pandemonium.

  Abramson wanted to take the show to larger venues to increase the gate, but he feared that a larger arena would diminish the thrill of the slaughter.

  * * *

  After two years, the audiences started to subside and the promoter needed to rejuvenate the show. New supporting acts were not enough.

  Abramson called a meeting with Marlowe and his father at his mansion in Greenwich.

  Marlowe and his father lit up two Cuban cigars that were offered to them and sipped on Remy Martin’s Black Pearl cognac when the promoter opened the meeting. “Werewolf on Broadway” has been an incredibly successful enterprise, and we replenished the funds you were initially after to continue your lifestyle for years to come.”

  Marlowe and his father smiled with pride and took another puff on their cigars.

  “However, I want to double the take on the show with a new angle, and I need your help to pull it off.”

  After what you have done for us, we would be happy to do whatever you think would increase the show’s popularity.

  “We need to turn a real werewolf loose in New York City. I suggest the red-light district would be the most advantageous for the media. It will make headlines like Jack the Ripper. Can you call up one of your werewolf friends and tell them to rip a few prostitutes apart on the next full moon?”

  Marlowe looked at the promoter in disbelief and said defiantly, “My father and I want no part of such an insidious plot. We are happy with the current results.”