by Bryan Smith
Martin’s eyes widened and his grip tightened on the phone as he read these words.
They know my fucking name! What the fuck!?
He took a few deep breaths and started to calm down. This wasn’t anything ominous. Of course they knew his name. The asshole (or assholes) who’d paid for this thing would have provided that information. He let out another big breath and reread the question posed by the Black Barrel bot. That wave of soothing warmth continued to flow from the barrel, further easing his anxiety.
What do I want most, huh?
He thought about that for a while. For quite a few minutes, in fact. He wanted a lot of things. They were the things everybody wanted. Love. Money. Happiness. An array of cool material things. Boats. Fast cars. A bigger house. Season tickets to his favorite teams. Hell, scratch that. His own private luxury box at the football stadium and the hockey arena. Hey, why not dream big? It was all fantasy bullshit, anyway.
The power flowing from the barrel seemed to rev up for a moment. It again raised gooseflesh on his forearms and stirred the air around him. Martin heard Hank’s paws scrabbling against the screen door’s window. He was barking again. It was a shrill bark, filled with terror.
Then the power cut off abruptly.
Martin shivered as he felt the air around him go still. A single dead leaf from one of the nearby trees fluttered lazily to the ground. The dogs were still whimpering a bit, but they were no longer barking in that shrill, panicked way. After eyeing it warily for some moments, Martin again touched the barrel.
Nothing happened.
Not even the faintest flicker of its former power. It was just a barrel. A simple metal construct. Probably that’s all it’d ever been. Yet he knew what he’d felt. That had been real enough, but perhaps it’d been some kind of trickery, a current of electricity—or whatever—generated by some cheap device embedded in the metal itself. This seemed unlikely, but what other rational explanation could there be?
Martin kicked the barrel.
A dull clang resonated inside it.
Shaking his head, Martin went back into his house and spent some time consoling his dogs, who were very happy to have him inside again and away from the barrel.
The calls started coming in about an hour later.
First he heard from his boss. The guy had always been kind of indifferent to him. Cordial, but nothing more. Now, suddenly, he was Martin’s number one fan. He wanted to offer him a new position at the company, a top management spot. Never mind that he didn’t have the proper experience. He could learn on the job. Martin didn’t know what to make of any aspect of this. He didn’t know which was stranger, the offer itself or the boss man’s effusive praise of his job performance, which Martin himself knew rated only a hair or two above the merely adequate.
Martin told the man he’d have to think about it and hung up on him.
Next came the call from Carol. She was a tearful mess. First she told him to tear up the court papers when they came. She wouldn’t be going forward with the case. Then she told him about Nathan. He’d just gotten a call from his doctor. The results of some routine tests had come back with some not so routine results. He only had weeks to live. After hearing the devastating news, Nathan tearfully confessed he was only with her for the money and had secretly been fucking a bunch of guys behind her back. At that point in her accounting of events, Carol broke down in hysterics and begged Martin to take her back.
Smiling as he spoke in a semi-consoling tone, Martin said, “Aw, that’s too bad, baby. We’ll get together for coffee or something and talk about it. Or whatever. Next week maybe.”
He hung up on her.
And so it continued throughout the afternoon. Call after call from colleagues, friends, and acquaintances, all of whom inexplicably wanted to offer him things. Money. Tickets to major events. A night out on the town, all expenses paid. A smoking hot female coworker called and confessed to having a major crush on him. She offered to come over and allow him the use of her body. He could do whatever he wanted to her. Or she could do any freaky thing he wanted her to do to him. “Anything goes,” she told him.
He gave her his address and told her to come over later that night. Then he hung up on her.
He looked at Hank and Lucille, who were curled up on the floor in front of him in the living room. Hank lifted his head and eyed Martin in a way that could be interpreted as vaguely reproachful.
Martin grunted. “You know what’s weird, buddy? I don’t remember ever giving that gal my number. Oh, well. Whatever.”
Later that afternoon, Martin went down to the corner store and bought a Powerball ticket. The jackpot was over $300 million and rising. He was feeling lucky and considered buying more than one ticket. In the end, he bought just the one. Whatever was happening here, luck had nothing to do with it. This was the right ticket, the only one he would need.
The knockout coworker came over that night and did every freaky thing he asked her to do, including a few that might have been borderline illegal. At the end of the long, exhausting romp, he told her he intended to take her to Vegas in a few days and marry her. She did not object to this idea.
The next day came the news that a single winning Powerball ticket had been sold. The entire jackpot would go to the ticketholder. Martin was unsurprised to learn that the ticket had been sold at a store down the street from where he lived. That the winning numbers matched the numbers on his ticket also did not come as a surprise. Martin called the state lottery office and made arrangements to come in the following day.
Immediately after hanging up with the lottery office, his phone buzzed. He stared at the screen and felt his pulse rate quicken. A new DM had come in from BB999. He swiped at the screen, tapped on the app, and saw the following message:
BB999: Monetary cost for services rendered is $666.66.
Martin laughed. “Of course.”
He tapped at the screen.
BadAzzSanchez: No problem. How do I submit payment?
BB999: PayPal amount to [email protected].
BadAzzSanchez: I’ll do it tonight.
BB999: Spiritual cost for services rendered is 100 souls.
Martin frowned. “Huh. That’s weird.”
More screen tapping, then . . .
BadAzzSanchez: 100 souls?
BB999: Correct.
BadAzzSanchez: I mean, I’ll sign over my own soul, no problem. It’d be worth it. But 100? How do I do that?
BB999: You must harvest 100 souls within a 6 year period or all will be taken away.
BadAzzSanchez: How in fuck do I ‘harvest’ 100 souls?
BB999: Simple. Kill 100 people.
A deep chill went through Martin as he read these words. Not because of moral qualms. He was past that. No, his hesitation stemmed from other, more practical matters. Killing that many people in that short a time frame would be a lot of work. Messy work. Moreover, he didn’t see how he could pull it off without getting caught.
He resumed tapping on the screen.
BadAzzSanchez: I’ll get caught. I don’t want to go to jail.
BB999: You will be protected. You will face no serious consequences in the mortal realm.
By now Martin was pretty sure he was no longer talking to a bot. There was an intelligence behind this interaction and not an artificial one.
BadAzzSanchez: You sent the barrel, didn’t you? Not a friend.
BB999: Yes. But we are friends. Black Barrel is a gift. The greatest gift of all.
Martin hesitated before tapping the screen again, swallowing a lump in his throat before sending the next message.
BadAzzSanchez: Are you Satan?
BB999: I am legion. Click the following link to digitally sign form and accept spiritual price.
Martin tried eliciting more information from the other user, but each time the only response was a repetition of the last message with the link. After thinking about it for a solid ten minutes, he shrugged and thought, fuck it. He clicked the link and signed wher
e indicated.
A final DM came from BB999.
He read it and sighed.
Should’ve seen that coming, I guess.
On a whim, he went out to his backyard.
The barrel was still there. He needed to put the thing in his basement, at least until he was able to move into the secluded mansion he meant to purchase with his lottery winnings. When he moved, the barrel would have its own room. A special place, sort of a shrine kind of thing.
The last DM from BB999 had read: Black Barrel is a receptacle. Fill it with 100 human hearts.
He figured he’d have to keep an assload of incense burning in that special room at all times.
Hank and Lucille had come outside with him. Lucille was off loping around the yard, looking for a place to squat and take a shit. Hank sat on his haunches next to Martin on the stoop. The dog’s eyes turned a dark shade of crimson as his owner scratched his neck.
Once Lucille was done taking care of business, Martin and the dogs went back inside.
Tina, his wife-to-be, was where he’d left her earlier, lying naked on the bed and awaiting his renewed interest. She sat up with a big smile on her gorgeous face as he came into the room.
“Darling!” she exclaimed with a squeal. “Are you ready to fuck me again?”
“In a little while,” Martin replied, as he started pulling on going out clothes. “Meanwhile, I’ve got a question for you.”
“Anything for you, baby.”
We’ll see about that.
“How would you like to go cruising the bad part of town with me?”
“Slumming it can be fun.”
Martin smiled. “How about if he we pick up a hooker and ritually sacrifice her soul to Satan? I’m not joking, by the way.”
Tina was still smiling as she slid off the bed and came to him, mashing her beautiful naked body against him. “Sounds like a good time to me.”
Martin kissed her. “You’re perfect. Do you know that?”
Tina giggled and kissed him back.
A few minutes later, they were on the road, headed for a part of the city inhabited largely by its less fortunate citizens. Martin knew of a likely place for picking up prostitutes. Not because he had any experience in that area, but because he’d seen a story on the news. And offing a hooker seemed like a good way to get his feet wet in this whole harvesting souls for Satan business.
He sighed at the thought.
He had a lot of work ahead of him. A hell of a lot of work.
SEVEN DEADLY TALES OF TERROR
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Lots of EC Comics-style horror in most of these stories, even more so than usual. With the exception of “South County Madman”, they were short and to-the-point by design.
TAKE A WALK
UNTIL THAT NIGHT, PAUL MALDONADO had never gone for walks around his neighborhood. Not during the daytime and certainly not in the midst of the lonely wee hours of the early morning. But he was bored at what felt like an almost terminal level. Bored with everything on the TV. Bored with the vast selection of streaming music available on Spotify. He was even bored shitless with the internet, sick unto death of surfing through the same fucking websites dozens of times a day every damn day.
But Paul’s boredom extended well beyond the array of entertainment choices available to him. Months had passed since the end of his latest failed relationship. With Sophia gone, the house was achingly silent, especially at night, and as a lifelong night owl, he was always up and at loose ends during the loneliest hours of the day. He felt like the walls were closing in on him. He was depressed, which was unusual for him. He’d always been a cheery, upbeat guy, but now the occasional suicidal thought was intruding on his consciousness, which was pretty disturbing.
Something had to give.
And so it was that at just past one in the morning on that night in early June, Paul switched off the TV he’d been staring blankly at for hours, grabbed his keys, and walked out of his house. After locking the door behind him, he stepped down from his porch, strolled out to the street, and took a look around.
The residential street was very quiet at that hour. A streetlight blazed almost directly overhead, illuminating a wide swath of pavement and adjoining yards. The yards were mostly well-tended. His own lawn was the sole exception. The grass was overgrown and should have been mown at least a week ago. A plastic white grocery bag was lodged in a shrub next to his front door. Glancing at it now, it looked like a weird little apparition floating in the darkness, a slightly unsettling impression standing out here in the empty silence.
Paul lived in an area adjacent to the hipster haven of east Nashville. Somewhere out there not too far in the distance was an array of coffee houses, bars, restaurants, and tattoo parlors catering to young douchebags who listened to boring bands, sported excessive amounts of facial hair, and wore stupid nad-squeezing jeans. Paul hated them all.
A turn to the right would take him in the direction of all that commerce. Many of the businesses—if not most of them—would be closed at this hour. Still, he was most likely to encounter other nighttime wanderers by going that way, so Paul went in the opposite direction.
He reached the end of his block in less than a minute, stopping at the intersection of Rosedale and Triumph. Triumph was the crossing street. It was also the name of a band he vaguely remembered from his youth. Well, he remembered the name. He couldn’t remember whether they were any good or not. Not that it mattered. Nothing really seemed to matter anymore.
Paul took a right at Triumph and continued his walk. He’d gone two blocks in that direction when he became aware of the footsteps behind him. Right away he detected an attempt at stealth. The footsteps were faint, yet they almost matched his own step-for-step. There was a sense of the deliberate about this, as if the person following him was doing it as a way of masking the sound. He tried telling himself this was just paranoia stirred by the lateness of the hour, the lack of any other visible human presence in the area, and the dead silence that otherwise dominated the night.
Maybe he wasn’t even hearing the footsteps of a follower.
Maybe it was just some kind of weird echo.
Paul quickened his pace. The abruptness of this led to a disruption of the pace-matching and immediately made it clear that what he was hearing was no echo. Once the footsteps behind him fell out of rhythm with his own, they became more discernible. Not only could he hear that someone was definitely following him, but his pursuer was closer than he’d first surmised. From the sound of it, the follower might be as little as ten longish paces to his rear.
He was moving through a dark section of Triumph, passing beneath the low-hanging branches of a tree. The tree was on the other side of a tall privacy fence, but the branches extended out over the sidewalk. Paul started to get scared for the first time as he ducked his head to avoid the branches and momentarily moved through an even deeper patch of darkness.
The footsteps of the follower quickened.
Fuck this.
Paul stood erect again as he cleared the branches. There was another streetlight at the end of Triumph, about another block ahead.
A low, insidious voice whispered behind his back, “Come here, you. Come taste my steel.”
A sinister chuckle followed.
Paul didn’t bother with a backward glance. That voice and the evil chuckle were all the confirmation he needed. He’d unknowingly put himself on a wandering psycho’s radar screen.
He took off running.
Paul heard heavier footsteps behind him as the follower gave chase.
At the end of the block, Triumph intersected with a street called Blakemore. Triumph ended here. Paul could only go left or right, not straight ahead. There was no time to think about it or strategize. He turned left simply because it was the opposite of what he’d done last time.
He’d gone less than twenty feet down Blakemore when he decided to finally risk a glance over his shoulder. No one was behind him on this stretch of sidewalk, but he heard the
follower coming, the unknown crazy person’s shoes slapping hard against the concrete.
Paul made an impulsive decision to dive behind a bush at the front of the small lawn to his left. He peeked through its thin branches as the follower came pounding down the sidewalk. The racing dark figure zipped right by the bush and continued on another dozen paces or so before slowing and then coming to a halt.
The man stood on the sidewalk, turning in a slow circle as he searched the vicinity for signs of Paul. The man was tall and dressed all in black. A knife with a long blade that gleamed in the glow of the streetlight was clutched in his gloved right hand. He wore a black ski mask, but the mask did not obscure how puzzled the man was. Despite his terror—and despite the scary way his heart was slamming in his chest—Paul almost smiled.
In fact, after another moment, he did smile.
He was still scared, of course. The stranger might yet spot the medium-sized bush and deduce the likely location of his quarry. But now another sound had arisen in the night. It was the growing buzz of an engine and not a small one. Paul saw it coming from a block away. A mass transit bus was barreling down Blakemore. Even from this distance, Paul could see it was nearly empty, which was not surprising at this hour.
The psycho was facing the street as the bus approached, scanning the lawns of the houses on the opposite side for signs of his vanished prey. Acting on impulse, Paul slipped out from behind the bush and rushed toward the psycho. At first he moved in a fast crouch. Then he was standing erect and running. He reached the masked predator at just the right moment.
The man let out a sound of surprise audible even over the loud buzz of the engine as Paul rammed the heels of his hands into the man’s back and sent him staggering out into the street. There was a loud splat of impact as the man’s body met the front of the bus. A louder squelch of brakes followed as the masked man’s body went flying down the street, skidding dozens of feet and leaving a wet, red smear on the pavement.