by Tim Wellman
The Collected Horrors
by Tim Wellman
This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, names, places, businesses, trademarks, or events and incidents is purely coincidental.
Special Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, or distributed in any form, print or electronically, without the expressed, written consent of the author, with the exception of brief excerpts used in reviews and news articles. Free copies are available, so please tell your friends they can download any format they like at smashwords.com
Contents
Breaking The Spell
About A Girl
The Girls In Room Three
Her Own Devices
Among The Things Forgotten
Cellar Doors
Thursday's Child
The Perry Legacy
Waking The Rain
Behind The Wall
Eaters
Sister's Condition
The Legend Of Julie Black
What Was Lost
Tomb Robbers
Love Struck
The Goodbye Place
Natural Causes
Preface
These are horror stories, stories that take place mostly in my home town and around the area of western West Virginia where I grew up and still live. Some are graphic, some subtle... all can be considered Appalachian Gothic. These are the collected stories, all the horror stories I've written to date. Some are good, some not so good, but a collected work always has that issue.
The stories in this collection represent different levels of horror... some are simply psychological thrillers, some are more direct and bloody, but all are meant for mature readers. They also vary in length. Two stories are not stories at all, but are novelettes and I was able to bring out a more novel-like feel in those.
I hope you enjoy all the stories. At some point, some of these have appeared in anthologies, or were accepted to anthologies, only to have the publisher lose interest (a peril of internet 'publishers'). I got tired of playing the game, so, I got the idea for this book. A story dump... but hey, there are sometimes real treasures found at the dump, right?
If you want to thank me for the free book, you can purchase one of my younger readers' novels or my new steampunk novel, Milk Of Ruin. Stop by my website, http://dreadly.net, for more info!
Breaking The Spell
The old red brick house stood alone in a landscape of fruit trees and tall grass, planted in the solid red clay hills of western West Virginia even before it became a state. Currently it had sat abandoned for many years after the last owner, Lydia Wells, disappeared under less than apparent circumstances. It was rumored the old woman simply tired of life and decided to walk into the creek at the western edge of the property, and was washed away in one of the frequent flash floods. She was, by most accounts, well over one hundred years old, perhaps even, though only in stories told by children, as old as the house itself. No one knew the manner of her disappearance for sure, but since the creek had claimed other lives in the past, it was the easiest to blame, and there were no signs of struggle in the house and no valuables were found missing according to newspaper accounts at the time.
Though the story, and the idea of something supernatural, spooked Allan Crum a little, his job was to evaluate and catalog everything in the house for his father's auction business and it was too damned hot to allow any further pondering of ghost stories. The family members, all distant relatives with no emotional ties, had decided that simply auctioning off all the contents of the house would be the best thing for everyone involved, and then the house could be cleaned and painted, and quickly sold. The idea was to get something from it before it all fell to total ruin.
"Why does dad always give me the worst assignments?" he said as he pushed the door open and stepped inside. "And he knows these old houses scare me." He shivered. It was a mess, with papers, some, no doubt, over a hundred years old, strewn about the floor, old photographs, pages from books... he was walking on a carpet of paper, too ruined to be of any value now. "And it had to be in the middle of fucking July." He was already sweating and thought seriously about returning to his car until the evening, but the old house had no electricity, so all of his work needed to be done during daylight hours. The room was well lit now, though, its huge old windows along the eastern wall with their tattered curtains letting in the noonday sun.
He took a picture of the room, and then concentrated on a couple of pieces of the old furniture. He took a small roll of red tape from his pocket and peeled off a strip and stuck it to the sofa. "Red means it's off to the garbage dump for you, my friend." He looked around again and smiled. "It might be easier to just paint this entire room red." He walked to the fireplace mantle and picked up a few things: picture frames, Staffordshire dogs, Pilgrim Glass menagerie animals. Nothing was terribly expensive, but by the boxful they would add up. He shook his head. It always amazed him, the small, petty things that help make up a life. Above the mantle was a huge portrait of a soldier, perhaps from the First World War. He was a handsome man with a thin mustache and sharply angled face, something like what he imaged every old soldier would look like.
He took a few steps back and took several photographs of the smaller items. He looked up through the camera lens and started to line up a short of the old soldier, but as he did something curious happened. There was a little girl dressed in a white shift and holding an old doll, standing next to the soldier, her arm around his leg. He was, at first, startled, but snapped the picture, then looked over the top of the camera. There was no little girl. He looked through the camera again, and there she was. He was a bit confused, but quickly decided the little girl was just faded and the polarization of the lens brought her out, even though he couldn't see her with his naked eye. "Damn, that spooked me for a sec," he said. "But maybe we can catalog it as a ghost picture or something and make a few more bucks from it." He squinted, then closed one eye and convinced himself he could just make out the figure of the little girl without the aid of the camera.
He spun around quickly because he heard laughter. It was from a small child, and sounded as if she were running off in a playful way, but there was no one there. The direction he thought the sound had come was blocked by a solid wall, as old and weary as the rest of the house. He chalked it up to the spooky painting affecting his reason. "See?" he said. "This is why I never liked horror movies." But, even though he knew it wasn't real, it caused sweat to bead up on his forehead and trail down his nose in rivulets. "Come on, Allan, get your shit together, man. This is happening because you think it's happening. Be strong! Think of naked women or something."
He walked through the large doorway and into the dining room. It was relatively intact and apart from the dust, not littered like the front room. The dinnerware was still on the shelves, displayed like trophies; the silverware, unfortunately plated, was still in the drawers. He took a few photographs of the cabinets, old country style solid pine, worth little more than scrap since the whole country kitchen fad had died out. He pulled out a few of the drawers but there was nothing of value... flashlights, a staple gun, broken sun glasses. He chuckled. He had the same things in his own dining room cabinet drawers. The old oak dining table and chairs would bring a bit of cash, though. He heard the laughter again. This time he was certain. It was real. He ran back through the doorway and just caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a very young girl running up the old stairway, but she was gone by the time he got to the foot of the stairs.
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"Hey!" he yelled. "You're not supposed to be in here!" He climbed a couple of steps and tried to look around the corner of the second floor hallway. "Little girl? Did you hear me? You can't play in here; this house is too dangerous!"
There was no response so he walked the rest of the way up. There was no sign of her. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, a dropped doll, candy, dirty footprints, an arrow traced out in the dust, but he found nothing. He turned to his left at the top and looked down the hallway. There were four doors and a large window at the end of the hall, but the layer of dust on the hardwood floor showed no sign of any disturbance. "Well, Allan, congrats!" he said. "You are officially fucking nuts, now, dude."
He looked over his shoulder, the hallway in that direction bent around a corner at the end, but it too was salted with a layer of pristine dust. The only possible place a small child could be hiding was behind the door right at the top of the stairs, but he was almost certain whatever he saw had turned left. He shrugged and then turned the door handle and pushed the door open. It was pitch black inside. "Is there no window in this room?" He opened the door wider and some of the darkness disappeared but it was still impossible to make anything out. "Hey? Little girl? Did you come in here?" There was no answer. He snapped a flash photograph and then looked at it on his camera screen. It was an empty room as far as he could tell. But down on the main floor, in the dining room, he heard the same laughter.
This time he literally ran down the stairs and burst through the doorway of the room, but again, nothing, an empty room. "God dammit!" He thought for a moment, and then he held his camera to his eye. Nothing had changed, still just the room... but no! She was there, beside the old cupboard. She was a young girl, maybe only four or five years old, barefoot, dressed in white, with her long blonde hair loosely tied back with a white ribbon. She was smiling, but seemed reserved and not quite sure of the situation. He lowered his camera and the room was once again empty. "Insanity," he said. "Definitely heat stroke." She laughed. He looked through the camera again and she was still there. She raised her hand, a sly look on her face, and waved slightly, as if she were trying to decide whether to make contact or not. "You're real?"
She nodded. "Are you?" She didn't seem completely sure she should speak.
He looked over the camera again. "Can you still see me?" When he looked back through the camera he jumped back. She was standing much closer.
She was nodding. "I can see you," she said. "The glass filters my energy so you can see me."
"I... you are a ghost?" he said. He assumed he was having a heat stroke and nothing he was experiencing was real, but he decided to indulge himself in his madness.
She smiled, but instantly her hair turned black and her eyes became solid white. "No, I am one of the others," she said. "And you are not!"
She took another step closer and he took his eye away from the camera. She wasn't there. But, he knew she was there. He suddenly felt a pain in his side, not excruciating, but noticeable and it felt like something was moving inside of him. He looked back through the camera. "Stop!" The little girl's hand was through his shirt and flesh, moving around. He backed away, nearly stumbling, but the wall righted him, and the little girl's hand came out of his body, holding a small blue stone. There was blood, he was bleeding profusely, but as he glanced down without the help of the camera, there was nothing out of place.
"You have many of these," she said, holding up the jewel in her little bloody hand. "A soul stone." She then pushed it between her lips and then disappeared with a laugh.
She was gone. He searched the room with the camera, and without, but there was no sign. He lifted his shirt and there were no marks, no signs at all that anything had happened. "Am I okay, now?" he said. "Holy fuck, that was weird!" He smiled and noticed a slight breeze blowing through the front door. "Ah, it must have cooled off just enough to break my fever?" He laughed. "Okay, need to spend fifteen minutes with my car air conditioner and then get back in here and get this shit done!" He walked back into the front room and through the open front door, but his hand was shaking so badly he could hardly fish his keys out of his pocket.
He finally got the door opened, though, and quickly sat down and started the engine and shoved his face close to one of the air conditioner vents. For a few moments the cold air on his face and neck caused him to smile and exhale sharply. But almost instantly, he knew she was there. He tried to just ignore her, but sitting in the passenger seat was the little girl. He could see her now even without the camera.
"Do you have a name?" he said. He still refused to look, but was surprisingly calm. More effects from the heat, probably, but the hallucination seemed harmless enough. At least she hadn't ripped his heart out... yet.
"Izbet," she said.
"I'm crazy."
"Probably," she said with a giggle.
He looked over at her. Her hair was blonde, again, being blown about by the air vent; her eyes were blue. "I can see you now because you took a part of me?"
She nodded. "You understand," she said. "I borrowed a part of your soul so you could see me without the glass lens. My energy vibrates at your frequency, now, as if I am your child."
"If I drive away..."
The car suddenly switched off. She nodded and it restarted. She then locked and unlocked the doors with the same power.
"Are you evil?" he said. He realized there was no way to run away, now.
"Sometimes," she said.
"A demon?" he said.
"Angels and demons are just words humans created to describe my kind."
But he had to try. He pulled the handle, pushed the door open with his shoulder and was on his feet and running before Izbet was able to react. He ran, not sure where he was going, but he wanted to be as far from the house and the little girl as possible. But it was futile. Within only a few strides, she was standing in front of him, her hair black, blocking his path. He slid to a stop on the lawn, turned, and even before he could move, she was again in front of him. "Okay," he said. "I give up." He sat down on the grass and folded his legs. "Do I die, now? Some sort of penalty for trespassing on a sacred burial ground or something?"
"No," she said. She sat down beside him as her hair changed to blonde, again. She pulled up a yellow dandelion flower and twirled it between her fingers. "I will tell you a story. Once there was an old woman. She wanted to live forever and made a contract with certain entities that granted her the wish. But she had not reasoned her wish properly. Though she would live forever, she would continue to age... all the illnesses and pains and diseases that come with age, came to her. But still she lived on, immortal but wracked with the pains, cancers, and a hundred different maladies that should have killed her. Even though her every prayer was to die, to end the pain, the certain entities continued to collect their payment, which, it seemed, was the old woman's agony." The little girl pointed up to a second story window in the old house. "She looked out that window every day for nearly a century, wanting only to end her torture."
"But, we were told she died a long time ago and her relatives wanted the house sold," he said. "She drowned or something."
The little girl nodded. "That is true," she said. "She killed herself."
"But..."
"A contract with those certain entities can never be broken," she said. "But she was able to find a way out of it... with a century of study or perhaps just luck, nonetheless, she got out." She looked up into the sky and smiled, but as she looked back at Allan, her hair and eyes changed and her attitude and personality seemed to go dark, sucking the energy from his body. "I want to know how she did it." She pointed to the house. "The answer must be in there, but I can't find it." As she stood, her hair and demeanor lightened. "But maybe you can."
"And why do you care what the old woman did?" he said. He flinched as if expecting her to attack him, but she just stood and stared up into the sky.
"Because I made a contract with them, too," she said.
"Oh," he s
aid. He suddenly felt sorry for the little girl, just a child. How could she have made a contract with anyone? He stood and scratched his head. "You couldn't have possibly known the consequences..."
"But I did," she said. "Does wishing to stay forever young sound wrong?"
"No, of course not," Allan said. "You were..."
"My payment was to become one of the others... you would call them demons or angels," she said. "It was a simple wish after my mother read me a bedtime story. But, somehow the words I spoke were perfect, or perhaps sharpened by some childhood desire I didn't even understand." She smiled and nodded. "But, they found me. A child in a lonely bedroom after the candles were blown out on a cold winter night on the day of my grand mother's funeral on December 12, 1875."
He started to touch her, pat her head, but pulled his hand back. "If your contract is broken..."
"I'll die," she said with a smile, "simply crumble with age, probably. You mortals don't know how we dream of that... how sweet we hold the idea of simply ending the string of memories and emotions, and giving our battered souls a rest. I don't even know where mine is, now."
"If I do this, I can go?" he said. "You will let me go?"
She smiled and nodded. "You can go, now," she said. "I won't stop you. You listened to my story; that's all I can expect."
He looked down at the ground and kicked something with the tip of his shoe. "What are we looking for?"
Izbet smiled. "Clues," she said. "I can't read; she must have written something. Maybe there is some magical object? I don't know. But part of the spell would have been to leave it behind for others to use. Creating new magic has rules to follow."
"How long have you waited here?" he said.