X: A Collection of Horror

by Saunders, Christian

  He remembered pulling on a pair of denim jeans and rushing out into the darkness bare-chested.

  Sure enough, bathed in moonlight, he saw a shadowy figure disappear into the rickety old wooden shed. Preoccupied with breaking the padlock on the door, the figure seemed oblivious to him.

  In his bare feet, Harvey negotiated the garden path and, struggling to contain his fury, followed the intruder. When he threw open the shed door, Harvey was surprised to come face-to-face with a wide-eyed teenager of no more than fifteen. Caught in the act, the boy looked terrified.

  “Please, mister,” he said, a look of panic spreading over his face. “Don't call the Old Bill.”

  Harvey hesitated. It was just a kid.

  The right thing to do would be to call the police. But that would mean restraining the interloper until they arrived, then giving statements, and maybe even going to court. Who needs it? The odds were the kid would get away with a slap on the wrist, anyway. He would be back out robbing that very night.

  There was another kind of justice. Street justice. Just give him a smack and send him on his way. Make it clear that the next time he came around, Harvey wouldn't be so nice about it. The kid might even thank him one day, bruises heal a hell of a lot quicker than police records.

  As Harvey stood blocking the only exit debating what to do, the intruder saw a half-chance and made for the door. Harvey thrust out an arm to try and stop him, his balled fist connecting with the side of the kid's head.

  The kid hit the dusty floor, and immediately raised his arms to cover his head, balling, “Please, mister. Don't hurt me, please! If you hurt me I'll tell 'em you're a kiddy fiddler. I'll tell 'em you touched me, down there. Tell 'em you touched me everywhere, I will, I WILL!”

  “Shut up!” Harvey hissed. The kid would wake up the whole neighbourhood if he kept this up.

  “Don't touch me any more mister, please!” The kid shouted. Then his tone changed and he fixed Harvey with a calculating stare. “How long do you think it will take for someone to call the police? I'm a minor, don't forget. I'm not going to jail, anyway.”

  “The police wouldn't believe you, you're in my shed!”

  “Take the chance, if you like. I'll say you brought me here. Kidnapped me off the street. It doesn't matter if the fuzz believe me or not,” the kid said. “If I sling enough mud at you, some of it will stick. All your friends and neighbours will think you're a sex case. Hound you out, they will.”

  It was the kid's attitude that pushed Harvey over the edge. Just who did the little shit think he was? Trying to call the shots, manipulate the system, when he had been caught red-handed doing something he knew to be wrong.

  Harvey kicked out, more to shut the kid up than with any malicious intent. He felt his foot connect with something soft. The kid's throat. There was a sharp intake of breath, and the kid tried to scream. But all that came out was a wheeze. Before he could make another sound, Harvey kicked him again, in the side of the head this time. And again. And again.

  Soon, the kid was quiet.

  Harvey looked down at the mess he had made. The teenager lay sprawled lifeless in a spreading pool of blood. His eyes were open, glazed.

  Was he dead?

  Shit!

  Harvey couldn't go to the authorities. Not with a dead kid in his shed. He would go away for a very long time and for what? Defending his property against the scum that tries to take it from you? There was only one option.

  He had to get rid of the body. Hide it, somehow.

  He waited in the shed until the hour was more respectable, turning the events over in his mind, then set to work with the variety of power tools he kept. Ironically enough, the same power tools that they boy would have stolen had Harvey not interrupted him. It was messy. Very messy. Though the actual dismemberment didn't take as long as expected, the blood and gore took the rest of the day to clean up. By the time he was finished, he looked and felt like an extra from The Evil Dead.

  Staring at the bloodied heap of human remains stacked on a spare piece tarpaulin in the corner of the shed, Harvey wondered what to do with them. Then, an idea came to him.

  He dug a hole in the secluded patch of land behind the shed, deep enough to keep any digging wild animals at bay, and lined it with powdered lime. He hoped the lime would help corrode the body. It was a trick the Nazi's used to dispose of dead Jews in World War Two.

  When that part of the task was complete, he dumped the body parts inside, filled up the hole with earth, and placed a some heavy rocks on top to keep any local cats or dogs digging them up again. Old Fido taking a thigh home would be positively disastrous.

  That very night, the noises started.

  Harvey, suspecting his property was being targeted by another intruder, quickly rushed into the garden only to find it entirely empty.

  Oddly enough, the noises continued even when he was inside the shed. They were distorted and oddly muffled, as if he were listening to developments through several thick layers of wool, but unmistakable. It was like a replay of the previous day's events. Confused and frightened, he fled.

  That was months ago. Every night since, he was forced to endure the same horrific ordeal. He came to dread the inevitable onset of night, fearful of the terrors it brought with it. He stopped going to work, and indeed, stopped functioning as a normal human being. What precious little sleep he had was haunted by terrible nightmares, and he saw the mocking face of the murdered teenager every waking moment. It was almost as if even in death, he refused to go away.

  Harvey was finding it increasingly difficult to keep the frayed ends of sanity together. Something had to be done.

  With a trembling hand, he picked up his mobile, sighed, and punched in three numbers.

  He waited for the person on the other end of the line to pick up and said, “Hello? Police, please...”

  The Devil & Jim Rosenthal

  She was in labour for fourteen hours. I stayed with her the whole time. I held her hand and whispered a few well-chosen words of encouragement in her ear while I silently wept at the sight of so much agony and suffering reducing the woman I loved to a pitiful, exhausted, pain-filled wreck.

  The miracle of childbirth. A woman thing.

  Men can only dream of the art of conception, the nine-month long adventure as one life slowly grows inside another and the final, ultimate triumph. A celebration of life and living. A moment so bloated with emotion that many women are unable to describe the event in any meaningful detail, adding to the mystery.

  Unimaginable pain as the pelvis opens and the vagina splits, a rush of adrenaline aided by the ever-plentiful supply of gas and air, one last push... a little like having a shit I imagine... then overwhelming relief and joy as the pain subsides and you are presented with a screaming, shivering, gore-streaked and blood-soaked miniature person. The happiest moment of your life, so they say.

  For me, though, it was the moment it all went wrong.

  I'd been looking forward to it so much. We both had. When I look back at all the planning involved, and then all the hard (yet very enjoyable) graft we had to put ourselves through, I didn't anticipate such an outcome as this for even the briefest moment. I would have considered myself mad for even entertaining such bizarre, twisted thoughts. For this was the stuff of nightmares. It made Rosemary's Baby look tame and unimaginative.

  The worst part is, nobody knows but me.

  Nobody else can see, so nobody believes.

  It isn't a baby. It isn't even human. If I told you what my darling wife had given birth to, you would laugh. You would think I was joking, and laugh until your sides hurt and tears ran down your cheeks. Even if I could prove to you that I wasn't joking, then you'd think I was mad. The victim of an untimely nervous breakdown or something.

  But I haven't lost my marbles. They are all still rooted exactly where they should be. I can still function normally and effectively in every facet of my complicated life. The only area where I experience problems is... the baby. And that'
s only because, despite what everyone else seems to think, it isn't a baby at all. In fact it looks remarkably like a caricature of Jim Rosenthal, the ITV sports presenter.

  Told you you would think I was joking.

  Or mad.

  I first noticed that something was amiss the moment the thing thrust it's vile deformed head out of my wife’s' gaping vulva, brutally ripping and tearing apart the once so delicate folds of secret flesh. Covered in blood, the head was huge. Entirely out of proportion to the rest of it's tiny body. Probably even bigger than my own head, with oval, darting yellow eyes, a grotesquely pointed nose and large tapering ears, Spock-style.

  As I watched dumbfounded, the thing announced its arrival by emitting an inhuman, high-pitched howl, and a sleek black forked tongue flicked out of its toothless mouth to taste the air for the first time.

  I actually screamed. I remember that part vividly. I screamed, and struggled to stop my bowels from opening right there in the delivery room. Those present must have thought that I was screaming out of joy or sympathy.

  No chance.

  I was screaming because I was absolutely horrified by what I was seeing.

  I turned my head and vomiting a mouthful of nasty hot bile on the floor.

  One of the nurses tussled my hair as if I were a ten year old boy and said, “Don't worry about it. You'd be surprised the amount of men throw up in here. Some even faint out cold. I'll just get a mop...”

  The stupid bitch! Could she not see? Couldn't any of them see that something was terribly, horrifically wrong?

  I could feel myself slipping into shock and fought it desperately.

  My plight wasn't helped by a young trainee midwife who kept screeching in false delight and chanting “It's a little baby girl! It's a little baby girl!” at the top of her irritating voice over and over again until all my fear and confusion was replaced by a searing rage. I wanted to fly at her and punch her in the face until she stopped shrieking.

  Or stopped breathing.

  It wasn't a little baby girl. It was a fucking monstrosity.

  Minutes later the chief midwife wrapped the howling, shivering baby-thing in a thick blanket (mercifully almost covering its head) and handed it to me with a smile. The look on her face told me I should be grateful.

  Trying desperately to hide my revulsion and swallowing back sour mouthfuls of vomit, I smiled back weakly and took the bloody bundle, the flesh on my arms prickling with disgust.

  As it was our first child, and it had been a particularly fraught and gruesome delivery (not surprising when you take into account the size of the thing's head) the hospital decided to keep both mother and child in for two or three days observation.

  Over the course of that time, I found myself dreading the onset of visiting hours. I would be forced to sit and watch my beautiful wife nurse the baby-thing as its massive head lolled lazily on its frail shoulders, and obscene sticky liquids oozed out of every orifice in its pale body. All the time we were surrounded by perfectly happy and normal new families. Laughing, joking, immersed in their brand new lives.

  I put on a brave face of course, but there was simply too much fear and loathing in me to hide all the time. Now and again the cracks in my armour would reveal, to some extent, my true feelings.

  My wife's brow would crease, she would take my hand lovingly in hers, and ask me what was wrong.

  So I lied.

  What else could I do?

  I voiced non-existent political anxiety, and feigned concerned about her health and our financial future. Anything to keep her happy.

  Sometimes, it's better to lie to protect the ones you love.

  Then, they were home. Safe and sound.

  Friends, family and neighbours came to visit, all saying what a lovely, pretty little thing she was. I watched closely for any flicker of distaste, any indication at all that someone else might be seeing what I saw.

  But there was none.

  It was just me.

  Only I could see the truth behind the disguise. I had never felt so alienated.

  I looked on in helpless horror as the bond between my wife and the offspring deepened and their love blossomed. I was in emotional turmoil.

  Desperate to do the right thing, I unselfishly played the part of the devoted husband and doting father, while secretly struggling to come to terms with it all. My work began to suffer. Feverish nightmares haunted my restless nocturnal hours, and I spent the days in a permanent state of disbelieving shock. Before too long a gigantic, ominous question-mark began hovering over my sanity like a vulture over a rotting carcass

  The turning point came when I saw her breast-feeding for the first time. My stomach churned as I watched the baby-thing take my wife's swollen nipple greedily into its mouth the way a new lover would. It stared at me as it was doing it, as if laying down a challenge to a rival. I knew then that things could only get worse. The baby-thing, that devilish product of our divine lovemaking, would be driven between us like a wedge, pushing us ever further apart, and soon our relationship would disintegrate leaving me isolated in misery.

  I had to do something.

  When the time came, it happened spontaneously. I didn't plan a thing.

  I thought about 'accidentally' killing it. Maybe smothering it with a pillow while it slept. But would anyone believe me? If discovered I would be branded a baby-killer and child abuser, and be hated by everyone with such a lethal passion that my life would be permanently under threat. Even if I did get away with it, I knew that my wife would never forgive me for allowing anything to happen to her precious devil-baby. However convincing I made things look, there would always be a burrowing maggot of doubt in her mind.

  She suspected something was wrong for a long time. Like most women, she was very perceptive. Women's intuition and all that. So one night, she confronted me.

  Caught on the hop, I told her that I had met someone else and had begun an affair. It was either that, or tell her the hideous truth. A girl from the office, I said. Our marriage was over. I was going to live with this young tart, despite the new baby. Very sorry. See you around.

  My wife wept uncontrollably for what seemed like hours, shouted hurtful abuse at me for a while, and then I left never to return, with only the clothes I stood up in.

  Like I said, sometimes it's better to lie to the ones you love.

  That was an age ago.

  Don't ask me how long, because I couldn't tell you. I live on the streets now. One of the many thousands of city dwellers that exist around the fringes of society. I move around the hostels and soup kitchens like your average homeless person. Maybe you've walked past me yourself on your way to work one morning. Maybe you were kind enough to throw me some change. You probably weren't. Something else I have come to learn recently is that genuine human kindness is rare.

  A few of the people I've met have asked me my life story. We all have a story to tell. Everybody does. But when I tell them, they either laugh at me or simply shake their heads and walk away, muttering about worthless, dangerous nutters.

  I can only tell them the truth.

  And, even though everybody else seems blind to the fact, the truth is that my beautiful wife gave birth to a demonic Jim Rosenthal look-a-like.

  Yes, Jim Rosenthal.

  I mean, if it had been Des Lynam I wouldn't have minded half so much. But I never liked that fucking Jim Rosenthal.

  Club Culture

  Max looked at his watch anxiously. Almost midnight, Saturday. The clubs would be all but full by now, the city centre teeming with testosterone-charged life. Hoards of hardcore ravers would be fighting wandering pissheads for right of entry into some exclusive establishment or other, and sex-starved packs of lads would be chasing scantily-clad young females through rain-swept streets, attracted by the pumping music and flashing disco lights like moths to a flame.

  Max stared into the full length mirror, admiring his new outfit - a smart, black, Hugo Boss number. Classy, smooth, elegant, though not too flash.
Understated. Soon, he would have the ladies eating out of his hands. All they had to do was get an eyeful of his rugged, dark complexion, powerful build, cheeky smile festooned with perfect white teeth and, of course, just a sniff of his bulging wallet. He winked at his reflection in anticipation of another night of meaningless sex with a girl he would never even know, nor even want to know beyond the sheets.

  According to a flyer picked up on a previous jaunt into town, there was a new place opening over in Woodford Green tonight. It may be worth checking out, just to get a break from the tediously commercial house/garage/cheesy pop combo to be found in most of the larger clubs.

  It would mean the inconvenience of a taxi journey, though.

  When the taxi arrived, Max handed the driver the crumpled flyer and settled down to endure the awkward silence as the taxi wove its way through the complicated network of neon-washed streets towards his destination.

  On arrival, Max thanked the silent driver and paid him. There was no tip. Not because he couldn't afford it, but simply because Max didn't think the driver deserved one. He had done his job adequately, nothing more. If people wanted tips, they should go the extra mile.

  The new club was situated above a snooker hall. As Max climbed the stairs the steady thump of bass and excited chorus of voices grew steadily louder. At the top of the stairs was a small foyer. A withered, seedy old man sitting behind a glass partition flanked on each side by burly hulking doormen muttered the price of entry. It was reassuringly expensive.

  Max passed over a folded note, noticing a door behind the cashier briefly swing open. Behind the door a frightened youth was being subjected to a rigorous search by two burly bouncers. They were probably looking for weapons. Or perhaps drugs they could confiscate, then pass to their own protected dealers operating freely inside the club. For a nominal fee, of course. The only loser in the arrangement would be the trespassing rogue peddler, who would lose his gear and receive a damn good kicking into the bargain.

  But what was he going to do about it?