New Fears II--Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

by Mark Morris

  But by that point I already knew what I had to do.

  See, after that day? I couldn’t turn on an electric light anywhere—couldn’t even get near one—without hearing this… buzzing. Incandescent, CFL, LED, doesn’t matter. If I listen hard enough, like really, really hard, I can even hear it coming from computer screens or smartphones. And the buzzing… once you listen long enough, it sounds like—a voice. Whispering. I can’t ever make out what it’s saying, but I know it’s saying something. You know, how you can always tell?

  And once it starts sounding like a voice, I know whose voice it is.

  Has to be.

  So.

  (LONG PAUSE)

  I quit my job. I bought a farmhouse—all stone and wood, not a bit of metal in it. I took up growing my own vegetables, raising my own chickens—they really are amazingly stupid birds, by the way. I made goddam sure they ripped out every piece of wiring in the building. I cut my own firewood, I buy oil supplies for lanterns and candles. Reading is the only entertainment I have. And when I’m too tired to read, I shut off the lantern and I sit in the dark, and the quiet, until I can fall asleep.

  Because the grid is a web, a network of energies. Of ghosts. And things live in it, waiting for food. Hunting. Like spiders.

  I mean, maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe that thing was as ass-dumb as a chicken itself. But if it wasn’t… if it remembers there’s stuff here to eat, and at least one meal escaped… it might come looking. And I don’t want anybody else to die like Joe, eaten just because I wasn’t fast enough to get him to safety in time. That’s why I live alone. That’s the “conscience” part.

  That’s why I’m telling you this story now. Because if it happened to me, it might happen again. To someone else.

  (LONG, LONG PAUSE)

  Hey. Did I lose you there, Doss?

  Q: No. No, I just… um… I’m not sure what to say to all that. (PAUSE) I mean, I assume this is the reason for the anonymity and the alias. And the burner phone, too.

  A: Bingo. (PAUSE) So how crazy do you think I am, now? C’mon. Scale of one to ten.

  Q: Bronwyn, we don’t… look, that’s not…

  A: Relax. I’ve heard your show before. You did an interview last year with those guys who’re waiting for the shape-shifting space lizards to reveal they control the world, remember?

  Q: Well—yeah, but as long as they stuck to talking about building shelters and hunting schedules, they sounded sane. Maybe… maybe you could tell us a little more about your daily routine, the skills you use as part of your off-grid life…

  A: Nope. I’ve already been on this phone too long.

  Q: Wait, Bronwyn—one last question. If you’re afraid that this—thing, whatever—that it might come after whoever talks about it… should we be careful? What kind of… of risk would we be taking if we release this interview?

  A: If you do think I’m crazy, then obviously none. Right?

  Q: Bronwyn—

  (DIAL TONE)

  * * *

  Oshi Takamura 4:53 PM (1 hour ago)

  to me, Jen ▼

  Hi Lucas,

  Listened to Doss’s file, and I have to say I agree—don’t care about people’s crazy reasons for living off-grid, but our shows have to talk about actually *living off grid*, because that’s what people tune in for. It’s also not long enough—we’d need at least another twenty minutes to round out a full episode. Try not to be too hard on Doss, BTW. I’ll have to pull an all-nighter to catch up, but it’s still a couple of weeks before exams.

  Oshi

  Lucas Brennan 5:21 PM (30 minutes ago)

  to Oshi, Jen ▼

  Hey Oshi,

  Dude, you’re way too forgiving. Doss should have damn well known better before he wasted all our time on this. This is not the same as spending three out of forty-two minutes on a conspiracy theory, this is Stephen King nightmare crap.

  If Doss wasn’t our biggest audience draw I’d be seriously tempted to fire his ass. I’m deleting that file and I’d strongly recommend you do too.

  If you’re OK with the all-nighters, Oshi, then I’m going to go ahead and pull the May 17th episode material forward to the 3rd—make sure you update the home page sidebars to match. Jen, I’ve reworked the interstitial scripts to pad them out a little. If you could review the attached files and do a couple of rehearsals on your own, then be ready to go for a recording session on the afternoon of April 25th, that’d be great. Let me know if either of you have any problems.

  --L.

  * * *

  From Reddit.com, posted May 13th 2018:

  Lost episode of “GridLost”

  submitted 11 hours ago by DossalFinn

  74 commentssharesavehidereport

  harmony-interview-apr-18.mp3

  [-] offbroadwaychaos

  anyone got a screenshot of the GridLost home page? i wanna see if this was ever scheduled.

  permalinkembedsavereply

  [-] HyperJoan

  I’ve attached a .gif from Wayback but it just says “Special Guest Star coming”. Which could be this Harmony chick, I suppose.

  permalinkembedsavereply

  [-] svalbard43

  Don’t get it. Is this supposed to be a late April Fool’s joke or what?

  permalinkembedsavereply

  [-] MichaelTwyla50

  No, I listen to GL all the time and this is the guy, this is Doss. + on the May 3rd show the producer did come on and apologize for a shorter-than-usual episode, which would completely make sense if they chickened out of releasing this. + Harmony6893’s a real person, I’ve read some of her posts on prepperforums.net

  permalinkembedsavereply

  [-] ChocoBot14

  I’ve posted a transcript of the file here if anyone’s interested, with a few annotations.

  permalinkembedsavereply

  [-] RagingManticore

  Okay guys: read transcript and phoned up the Toronto police department. theyve got a missing persons case still on the books from January 2017 for a ryerson engineering student age 22 named joseph macklay, last seen near a condo off adelaide west, fifteen minutes from downtown bay street. local real estate records say theres a corner one bed plus den unit still listed hasnt sold since. sooooo either a *really* well-researched creepypasta or ???????!!!!!?????

  permalinkembedsavereply

  [-] KevlarTuxedo

  lol youre a tool—links or its bullshit

  permalinkembedsavereply

  * * *

  From a subforum on www.prepperforums.net, posted June 5, 2018:

  Hello everyone.

  I’ve been drafting this post for a couple of weeks now, after my last trip into town, when I realized that my interview with the “GridLost” people had gone viral. Honestly, I never expected them to release it in any form. I just wanted to tell myself I’d told somebody. I still don’t know if I haven’t made a really big mistake. But there’s nothing I can do about it now.

  That’s why this is going to be my last post to these forums, or any other. I’m cutting the last cord. I want to thank everyone for everything I’ve learned here, and I hope I’ve given as much as I’ve gained. If I came into this community out of fear, I think I’ve found something like peace, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

  Some of you are probably going to ask why I’m not trying to make more out of this. I mean, if you believe me, then you accept I saw something that proves everything people think they know about the world is wrong, or at the very least horrifically incomplete—and when there are millions desperate for any reason to believe there’s something out there beyond the 9-to-5, beyond iPhone line-ups and Netflix, why would I not trumpet everywhere I could? Some people would say even a universe full of horrors is better than a universe full of nothing but us.

  To that, I say: Wait until you meet one.

  If we do live in the bubble I think we do, then the single best thing I can do is not poke more holes in it than I have to. Maybe it’s temporary and futile; mayb
e the bubble’s going to collapse anyway, one day. Maybe we’ll all become nothing more than parts of the same EM spectrum we’re living off of, energy reduced to its lowest thermodynamic denominator, constantly preyed upon, consumed without ever being destroyed. And in that endlessness will be our end, an ouroboros knot, forever tied and untying—no heaven, no hell. Just the circuit, eternally casting off energy, the sparks that move this awful world.

  But not today. Not if I have anything to… *not* say… about it.

  This is Harmony6893, signing off.

  1 The references to “Bay Street” and the “TSE” make it likely that Harmony/Bronwyn is Canadian, specifically from Toronto, Ontario; “TSE” in context almost certainly stands for the Toronto Stock Exchange, and Bay Street runs through the downtown finance core of the city, making it the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street in Manhattan.

  2 Four inches.

  3 Arthur Machen, in the prologue to “The White People.” Paraphrased.

  FISH HOOKS

  Kit Power

  Sarah was buying a coffee in the train station when she first saw the fish hooks.

  She was reaching for her change, mind already on the journey and the meetings that would follow it, when she saw the single trickle of blood running down the man’s hand and onto the coins he was holding out to her.

  She froze, her own arm extended, fist half opened, and watched as the dark-red fluid rolled over the man’s knuckles before beading on his fingertips. Her mind was blank in that moment—devoid of any sense of place, of self. He’s bleeding, she thought. Just that, as the droplet grew fat and pregnant. Her eyes, moving apparently independently of her brain, tracked up the fingers to the hand holding the money.

  There, she saw the two-pronged fish hook.

  It was stuck in the back of the man’s hand, piercing the flesh either side of a prominent vein. There was no line or wire on the end of it, but the skin around it was taut, as though the hook were pulling the hand towards her, and she saw—with a cool, detached clarity born of profound shock—that the skin between the hook’s entrance and exit wounds was puckered and open, causing fresh blood to well up in the holes and stream down the pink skin.

  She stared at the hook in the man’s hand, thinking nothing at all. The moment stretched and stretched. She wondered vaguely what would happen when it snapped.

  The small eternity ended when the man grunted. The skin puckered more widely, the curve of the hook clearly visible beneath his flesh, as his hand moved closer to hers and his fingers opened.

  Blood splashed onto her palm; the coins bounced off her hand and fell from her nerveless fingers, scattering across the floor. It sounded like hailstones on canvas.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, miss.”

  She looked up then—the polite response so ingrained that it operated independently of the sudden roaring blankness in her mind.

  It was the man who worked at the drinks counter, who took her order and handed her coffee most mornings. A young guy with a thin goatee, earrings, long black hair in a ponytail, and an easy smile that often reached his eyes.

  The hooks were in his face too.

  He was frowning with concern as she stared at him. The two hooks in his eyebrows pulled them down, causing the skin beneath to wrinkle. The blood ran from the holes down either side of his nose like red tears. There were hooks in his cheeks too, pulling his mouth down in dismay, leaving running red lines to his chin.

  As he opened his mouth to speak, the hooks in his upper and lower lip tugged his mouth open, dribbling blood over his teeth.

  The paralysis broke then, and her fist clenched over the coins left in her hand as she turned and ran from the station.

  * * *

  She had a moment of peace outside. The autumn sun was dazzling enough that she couldn’t see clearly. She shut her eyes against the glare, not caring at the crowd jostling around her, past her, into the station. She felt like an island in the middle of a busy stream, and in the moment she embraced her stillness, relishing the feeling.

  Then she opened her eyes.

  The hooks were everywhere.

  She was looking down at the pavement, at the parade of legs in smart trousers and business skirts. The hooks were in thighs, in shins—red blotches on tights, crimson and clotted, like obscene poppies. Everywhere the hooks pulled flesh, stretched skin, dragging people into motion. Glancing up, panic rising, she saw more: a woman’s hand tugged to her face, brushing the hair from her eyes, droplets of blood falling onto her white blouse; a young man, ear buds in, the hooks pulling his eyebrows hard enough to almost tear, blood streaming down his face.

  She saw more, and more, her mind a series of impressions of spiked bent metal and open wounds, and always the pulling, the stretching, and the pounding of her heart became a piston beat in her ears, and her mind filled with one thought, one impulse, to be away, and she started to sprint, fleeing blindly across the road, past a blare of horns and a screech of tyres, and up the street.

  * * *

  Eventually the pain in her chest got too much, and Sarah stopped running. She slowed to a walk, and then all but fell onto a bench. Her heart was punching a hard, heavy rhythm, and her lungs burned with each ragged breath. She gingerly stretched her legs out, wincing at the pain the movement caused in her thighs and calves.

  She closed her eyes briefly, intending to focus on her breathing, to count, but when she did the image of fish hooks in skin came into her mind. She quickly pulled them open again.

  She took in the park around her. The spring sunlight played through the leaves of the tree whose branches overhung the bench, dappling her skin with spots of light and shade. A cool breeze set those spots dancing over her and the tarmac of the footpath in front of her. Further away, the path sloped down through the middle of the grass, towards the edge of the park. She could just make out the shape of the archway above the train station entrance, and suddenly the cool breeze made her shudder violently. Her jaw began to judder, her teeth clattering together, goosebumps rippling under her cardigan. She let the shakes come, hugging herself and tilting her face up, looking through the branches and leaves into the lush blue sky.

  Time passed. The shakes tapered off gradually, resolving into a tremble in her hands. She closed them into fists, gently, looking at the unmarked skin, wondering. Watching the trembles stutter and finally stop. She closed her eyes, and this time there was only blessed darkness. She took a deep breath, slowly pulling in air from her diaphragm, feeling her lungs swell. Held it. Exhaled.

  Then she opened her eyes. Turned her fists over.

  “Okay, here we go.”

  Unaware that she’d spoken out loud, she opened her left fist.

  In the centre of her palm was a dark, almost black stain, tapering to a smear of red. Blood, from the coins.

  “Okay, well… okay,” she said.

  Then she started to cry.

  * * *

  She walked home. All six miles. There was a bus that went straight to her door, but the thought repelled her. She briefly considered phoning a cab, but couldn’t face the idea of being in an enclosed space, especially if the driver…

  So she walked, head down, eyes fixed on her feet, following the path through the park, back to the streets. There were other people, but she refused to look up, knowing what she would see. Even then, just looking at the ground, she knew. The dark splotches on the pavement were everywhere, some baked black in the warm light, others fresh red.

  She passed several people. She didn’t look up once.

  She let herself into her house, shut the door behind her, and slid down it, curling into a ball. She held her head and stared at the bristles on the door mat.

  Sometime later the phone rang, and she gingerly rose to her feet, wincing anew as her leg muscles protested. She let the phone ring—work probably, wondering where the hell she’d got to—and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. She took it to the living room and sat on the sofa, sipping it and wondering what to do next.


  When she got to the bottom of the cup, she still didn’t have any answers. So she went into the spare room, made the bed up, and climbed into it.

  * * *

  The knocking woke her.

  “Love?”

  Tim’s voice was muffled by the door, but even so she could hear the note of concern. By common consent the spare room was reserved for when one or the other was ill, or had got in too late and was courting a hangover. They had learned early on that unbroken sleep was a must have for both of them, and acted accordingly. They’d barely had a disagreement since introducing the policy.

  “Don’t come in!” An image sprung to her mind—of Tim’s face, pierced by thin metal hooks, pulling his features into what she sometimes laughingly called his “concerned face”, the wounds bleeding… she thought if she saw that she might not come back to herself.

  “Okay, love. What’s wrong?”

  She felt a laugh threatening to bubble up in her throat, and she clenched her jaw hard until the feeling subsided.

  “Not sure. Some kind of… bug. Came on very sudden. At the station.”

  “So you didn’t make it in?”

  “Nah, had to come home.”

  “God, I’m sorry. You throwing up?”

  “No, I’m… no.”

  “Okay. Well, can I get you anything?”

  “No, love, I just really need to rest up, okay?”

  “Sure, no problem. I love you. Text me if you need anything.”

  She smiled at that, briefly.

  “I will. Love you.”

  She heard him take a step, pause, then head back downstairs. Shortly after, the sound of the television came through the floorboards, loud, then muted to a mumble.

  Sarah dug out her phone. At some point, either on the walk home or after she’d had her tea, she’d set it on silent. The conversation with Tim made her think of it. Six missed calls, over a dozen texts; all from work. Shit.

  She replied to the last text from her boss, not bothering to read the message.

  Sorry. Really unwell. Running a fever, totally out of it. Unlikely to be in for the rest of the week. She hit send. It was after 7 pm, but the reply came back within a minute. Get well soon. If you’re going to be off more than 4 days, you’ll need a doctor’s note.