ANTHOLOGY
MYSTERY AND MAYHEM
MYSTERY AND MAYHEM
DEAD RINGER
C S Caspar
Catherine Stepancic/Caspar Copyright © 2018
C S Caspar
Catherine Stepancic/Caspar Copyright © 2018
Part One
While Max and I walk through the unending passage of countless tombs. I felt something in the air. Something subtle and unknown. A strange atmosphere. Like an airborne odor of invasion, where the deceased watched us in despair.
Stale and unsmiling representations adorned the recent headstones. Nevertheless, the black and white pictures of the beloved cadavers were all the same…Grim-faced memories of an outline casting echoes of past lives. Pictures of intimate and familiar details bound them to their ancestors, and instead of being beautiful. Their insidious morbid faces did nothing but seethe envy onto the living. The portraits only served to feed another morose accusation. The appalling words of love. ‘A kind and loving father.’ 'Dearly missed and loved by all.’
I wonder? Were the maggoty corpses interned. . . As loving as the odious inscriptions their relatives had seen fit to offer? Or was this act needed? Because the living fear speaking ill of the dead?
And anyway… Would the dead care?
* * * “Where are we going?” I asked Max.
“Aisle sixty-six.” He replied sharply.
I’d only just met the man and already he was getting on my nerves. I had a bad feeling about this job; Night security guard for the deeply dead. However, I was desperate, and in my present financial state. Any job was good enough.
The interview hadn’t gone as I’d expected. "You start on night shift," were the first words out of his mouth. “An` all I want you to do is keep the place locked up and the vandals out.”
He had introduced himself. Then announced he needed to show me something important. So, six minutes after meeting. We found ourselves walking through the area, he called, the abandoned. These run-down tombs carried no morbid pictures, and most… Long forgotten by their relatives. Who were also, undoubtedly dead.
At the end of row sixty-six. Max stopped and I fell in beside him.
“There.” He said, pointing a gnarled finger. A lone headstone stood in a grassy patch some distance from our position. Clearly-visible, and engraved in the stone were the words, “THE BLACK DWARF,” and they hadn’t faded overtime.
“Who's the Black Dwarf?” I had to ask while feeling slightly amused.
Max spat towards a nearby tomb, leaving green slime seeping into the cracks. “Don’t go near that one!” He rattled, then turned to look me in the eye. “You hear me boy? Don’t you ever… go near that one!”
“Com`on, Max. It's just a piece of stone. The dead stay dead.”
The old man held my eyes. “You see that number engraved underneath? It's the number of people he tortured and then burned at the stake. ‘The Black Dwarf’ was a priest and an inquisitor. Servant to the church during the witch trials, an` buried here in 1666. But he ain’t dead. This one is so evil he ain’t allowed to die.” Max continued without taking a breath. “You see that bell tower there, next to the tomb? Well, when you hear it ringing, you stay inside the cabin. Lock the door and you don’t come out until the sun rises.”
I couldn’t help smiling, “You’ve got to be kidding me. A dead ringer?”
“Listen boy. You do as I say. Because there will be no God in heaven, nor on earth, that will save your soul from the hideous ghoul, that comes out of that grave at night to steal your sanity. Don’t get curious. Don’t go out there, and if you see him. You run for it.”
“See him? Who am I going to see?” I replied, grinning comically.
“The priest, you fool! Haven’t you been list`nin?”
I'd begun wondering if Max was one tool short of a set. “Listen Max, I don’t believe in ghosts, and if you’re implying the ghost of this priest walks around at night. I’ll need a little more convincing.”
“Did I say he was a ghost, Boy…?”
If he called me boy one more time…
Max turned and started through the tombstones heading towards the cabin. “Are you com`in?” He growled without looking back. I took one more look at the gravestone and then followed the grumpy old man. Moments later we stood at the cemetery gates. While locking the chain, he added a final comment. “You hear that bell ring…you stay inside.”
“Sure.” I replied with a smile. Max shook his head in disgust then walked away.
It wasn’t long after Max left, and I hadn’t made it back to the cabin, before the sun started its decent below the horizon. Already, dark shadows were making their way across the graveyard. It’s going to be a long night. I thought. Time for a coffee.
* * *
The cabin was morbid and sparsely equipped. Against the north wall a small round table and single chair. To the left, a tattered two seat fake leather couch. Beside the bookcase, a small timber counter; single sink in the middle and some leaning shelves holding mugs, a few dirty plates and other kitchen paraphernalia. Everything covered in a fine spray of dust. No radio and no television.
While considering the long hours ahead. My thoughts wandered to my last morbid occupation. Mortuary assistant. I’d learned about dead ringers from conversations with another staff member. That job had ended badly and I was hoping I wasn’t in for round two when dealing with the dead.
Dead ringers appeared sometime in the 1700s when hysteria ran rampant. Tales of the dead waking in their graves led to a bunch of swindlers making and selling coffins fitted with safety devices. Just in case.
Designs were creative. Coffins had tubes inserted for air; to keep the person alive until someone came to rescue them. Other models added strings attached to the hands and feet of the dead. The strings led out of the coffin and connected to a bell next to the grave. Ringing the bell, alerted the night-watchman and the interned alive could be freed.
One story had a priest coming to the cemetery at intervals and sniffing the tubes just to see if decomposition had set in. Now, that’s a job even I would never do. Not for any pay day. Nevertheless, waking up six feet under the ground and confined in a box, goes straight into the heading… a thousand ways to re-die.
I hadn’t had time to shake the visions of waking up in my own grave when I heard the bell ringing. Seriously it's crazy…I did hear it, but decided to ignore it. It's just my imagination. Yeah! That’s what I thought. Until someone or something was banging hard on the cabin door, shaking the hinges from their screws.
Right here and now. I don’t have to tell you my eyes became saucers and my heart beat so fast, it started choking me. I couldn’t shut my mouth to stop the blockage. I backed into the farthest corner of the room. My mind awash with fear and hammered by the endless banging. Something slid under the door. I saw it but couldn’t name what it was. Smoke? Then dizziness overwhelmed me and I was falling. A second later everything went dark.
Part Two
“I’ve been waiting a long-time for you… Jason…I know what you did.” The voice sounded hollow and distant, yet at the same time, I could feel a foul cold fluid cut into the back of my neck. Then as if beaten out of paralysis. I moved around searching for the source of the voice. But there was no-one except shadows and gravestones. The darkness had stripped everything down to reality. I had no idea how I came to be in the graveyard.
My stomach churned as visions in an altered mind, induced pictures of a deformed and hideous dwarf. He was pointing at me while surrounded by the carnage of yesteryear. The macabre spectacle danced in a dream before my eyes. However, all I could think was… how did he know? What I had done so long ago. No one knew…Nevertheless, the dream roused scenes I’d rather forget, and I’m telling you… it hadn’t been my fault.
* * *
The stupid cretin fought like a madman. He was just a-nobody, a Bagman. His body found on the street and supposed to be dead. The coroner had left the room and I had just begun preparing the needle and cord to stitch him up for his insignificant burial.
While approaching his naked, cold and dead body. Laying stock-still on the iron slab. I thought. Dead−just a piece of discarded meat. No different from carving up a pig. But I was wrong. We all were… Because a moment later he sat up from stiff paralysis. Looked down at the incisions on his torso, then turned to see his disemboweled entrails on the bench. A silent pause and then he started screaming like a hoard of demons. The dead man’s horrified and appalling shrieks assaulted the atmosphere as the murderous reality of his autopsy came into realization.
Now, I’m thinking... which event is graver? Waking at your own autopsy? Or buried in your coffin?
The horrified Bagman stared at the huge bloody slices of flesh, forming bat wings on his chest; exposing what was left of the harvest. In a flashback−when the cutting was going on. I’d remembered thinking; the-fact-that he was bleeding wasn’t exactly normal. And why the coroner wasn’t concerned… because the dead don’t bleed… Posed more than a few questions of his ethics. I didn’t say anything, because what did I know? I was just an employee, doing my job.
The coroner had broken the dead hobo’s ribs, about twenty minutes ago, and he’d removed specific organs. Kidneys in the cooler. Some dollars, cashed on that organ. Liver in another. But the heart… well that was another story. The coroner had placed it in a jar filled with meth, and left it on the shelf. Right next to the pile of intestines; motionless hollow snakes in a bowl that stunk to high heaven.
Then all hell broke loose.
The dead man lunged at me, but his grip was slack and useless. “You” he screamed, staring at the needle and threat in my hand. “What have you done?” And his voice became a lost wail. That’s when insanity erupted and my voice joined the shrieking chaos. The world seemed awash in an appalling maelstrom of clashing between my shouts of horror and the dead man’s cry to battle. A twisted, hellish spectacle unleashed in a shared blood lusting that battered the walls of the mortuary.
During the commotion, he’d managed to get his hands on the jar holding his heart. His disjointed tries at moving forced him to slip on his own blood, where he fell with a wet thud onto the concrete floor. Smashing the glass and slicing his face. His lifeless heart rolled out-of-reach and meth; in a rapid smear, spread across the ground.
The dead man’s screams rose and gathered substance. He raised himself onto his knees and the rest of his organs spilled in bloody juice. At this point, I’d had enough. I ran to the far wall and seized the gas torch used for burning discarded body matter then turned it to the writhing corpse. In an instant, the meth exploded and was ablaze. The hobo’s body ignited. He started thrashing and burning while shocked accusing eyes filled with mortal grief locked on mine. He howled like an agonized animal, as the stinking red flames erupted and rose to the ceiling.
Standing transfixed and half-conscious. I watched his body lurch and writhe, then a fountain of blood mixed with flames exploded from his throat.
I staggered back from the scorching tendrils of fire leaching from the burning hobo and threatening to engulf me. Standing with my back against the wall, watching the burning scene unfold… I had a curious thought. “Well, old man. This time, you won’t be getting up again.” The idea of remorse never crossed my mind. Because when your dead. You should stay dead!
That was the moment my eyes blew open. It had all been a vivid dream. A conjured experience created by the constant connection to the dead, and my own morbid fascination with horror.
I looked around. I was in the cabin and it was as it had been before I passed out. However, I had been sure; just a moment ago. I was in the graveyard. Maybe, that cold smoke filtering under the door, had affected my mind? Fear had inspired a hallucination that felt so real. Because, back then, while stitching the bagman. I had only imagined... What would happen if he suddenly woke up? It was just a thought. He didn't... and never saw his body again.
I picked up the torch and walked outside into the graveyard. I was going to pay a little visit to the tomb of the Black Dwarf. See for myself if the priest was wandering the cemetery.
* * *
The tombstones were silent. Nevertheless, as always, I had a feeling the dead were watching, and tossing contemptuous curses at me each time I passed their frozen claim.
When I arrived at the Black Dwarfs tomb, there was nothing but silence. The flashlight lit the old headstone. Nothing unusual.
“I’m coming for you Jason.” Said a distant hollow voice. Emanating from just behind my ear.
“Go ahead and try. You bloody Dwarf. It's going take a lot more than dreams and a creepy voice to frighten me.”
I’d had enough of this ridiculous sense of invasion. So, I flipped the birdie and started back towards the cabin. Convinced old Max with his stupid tales of the walking dead had infected me. I wasn’t having any more of it. However, I hadn’t taken more than five steps when the bell started ringing.
Stopping in my tracks. I turned the torch back to the tomb. And there… Perched on the headstone, was the most grotesque gargoyle imaginable… One clawed hand was tolling the bell and the other was pointing at me.
The creature sprang skywards. Bat wings sounding like chomping plastic and beating to a time clock. It hovered just above the grave staring at me with a ghastly intelligence. Then I saw it. Gripped in one swinging leg, clasped in sharp talons, was a steaming human heart.
Moments later, the earth erupted and from graves all around the cemetery. The dead began to rise. That was it. I started running but I didn’t get far. Something unseen lay on the path, and in the dark, I tripped. Then something grabbed my leg in a cold hard grip and was dragging me down.
I struggled with every scrap of strength, after shear panic took over. My hands clawed the ground trying to stop the inevitable. I tried another maneuver. Rolling over, I started kicking at the corpse that wouldn’t let go. And even after I managed to detach its boned head, it still held on. I couldn’t scream because I had nothing but pure terror running through my veins. And it wasn’t long before I saw him. The Black Dwarf. He was standing atop the mound before his headstone. An ugly grotesque presence. Swinging in his left hand was the head of a dead black cat. Its eyes rolling around in its head, as if it were aware of its beheading, but was still alive. The Dwarf moved towards me. A ridiculous specter. Conjured by a sick and twisted mind.
Aware of the imminent danger. I continued to struggle with the stinking corpses, but they gripped me tight. More zombi cadavers fell on top of me and their suffocating grip was inescapable. It was all over and I knew it.
Part Three
At dawn the next morning when Max arrived at the cemetery he found the cabin empty. He didn’t have to wonder what might have happened the night before. He just grumbled some vague curses then headed to the nearby shed. He took the shovel in the corner and lifted the wheelbarrow. Along the path between the tombstones. He picked up an arm here and a leg there. Some entails and Jason’s head. Which he found dripping with blood and resting on the Black Dwarfs tomb. This was typical, because Max had performed the same ritual, time-and -time-again.
“Stupid idjot... I told him… I told him… No one ever listens…” Max moaned as he began digging.
While Max and I walk through the unending passage of countless tombs. I felt something in the air. Something subtle and unknown. A strange atmosphere. Like an airborne odor of invasion, where the deceased watched us in despair.
Stale and unsmiling representations adorned the recent headstones. Nevertheless, the black and white pictures of the beloved cadavers were all the same…Grim-faced memories of an outline casting echoes of past lives. Pictures of intimate and familiar details bound them to their ancestors, and instead of being beautiful. Their insidious morbid faces did nothing but seethe envy onto the living. The portraits only served to feed another morose accusation. The appalling words of love. ‘A kind and loving father.’ 'Dearly missed and loved by all.’
I wonder? Were the maggoty corpses interned. . . As loving as the odious inscriptions their relatives had seen fit to offer? Or was this act needed? Because the living fear speaking ill of the dead?
And anyway… Would the dead care?
* * * “Where are we going?” I asked Max.
“Aisle sixty-six.” He replied sharply.
I’d only just met the man and already he was getting on my nerves. I had a bad feeling about this job; Night security guard for the deeply dead. However, I was desperate, and in my present financial state. Any job was good enough.
The interview hadn’t gone as I’d expected. "You start on night shift," were the first words out of his mouth. “An` all I want you to do is keep the place locked up and the vandals out.”
He had introduced himself. Then announced he needed to show me something important. So, six minutes after meeting. We found ourselves walking through the area, he called, the abandoned. These run-down tombs carried no morbid pictures, and most… Long forgotten by their relatives. Who were also, undoubtedly dead.
At the end of row sixty-six. Max stopped and I fell in beside him.
“There.” He said, pointing a gnarled finger. A lone headstone stood in a grassy patch some distance from our position. Clearly-visible, and engraved in the stone were the words, “THE BLACK DWARF,” and they hadn’t faded overtime.
“Who's the Black Dwarf?” I had to ask while feeling slightly amused.
Max spat towards a nearby tomb, leaving green slime seeping into the cracks. “Don’t go near that one!” He rattled, then turned to look me in the eye. “You hear me boy? Don’t you ever… go near that one!”
“Com`on, Max. It's just a piece of stone. The dead stay dead.”
The old man held my eyes. “You see that number engraved underneath? It's the number of people he tortured and then burned at the stake. ‘The Black Dwarf’ was a priest and an inquisitor. Servant to the church during the witch trials, an` buried here in 1666. But he ain’t dead. This one is so evil he ain’t allowed to die.” Max continued without taking a breath. “You see that bell tower there, next to the tomb? Well, when you hear it ringing, you stay inside the cabin. Lock the door and you don’t come out until the sun rises.”
I couldn’t help smiling, “You’ve got to be kidding me. A dead ringer?”
“Listen boy. You do as I say. Because there will be no God in heaven, nor on earth, that will save your soul from the hideous ghoul, that comes out of that grave at night to steal your sanity. Don’t get curious. Don’t go out there, and if you see him. You run for it.”
“See him? Who am I going to see?” I replied, grinning comically.
“The priest, you fool! Haven’t you been list`nin?”
I'd begun wondering if Max was one tool short of a set. “Listen Max, I don’t believe in ghosts, and if you’re implying the ghost of this priest walks around at night. I’ll need a little more convincing.”
“Did I say he was a ghost, Boy…?”
If he called me boy one more time…
Max turned and started through the tombstones heading towards the cabin. “Are you com`in?” He growled without looking back. I took one more look at the gravestone and then followed the grumpy old man. Moments later we stood at the cemetery gates. While locking the chain, he added a final comment. “You hear that bell ring…you stay inside.”
“Sure.” I replied with a smile. Max shook his head in disgust then walked away.
It wasn’t long after Max left, and I hadn’t made it back to the cabin, before the sun started its decent below the horizon. Already, dark shadows were making their way across the graveyard. It’s going to be a long night. I thought. Time for a coffee.
* * *
The cabin was morbid and sparsely equipped. Against the north wall a small round table and single chair. To the left, a tattered two seat fake leather couch. Beside the bookcase, a small timber counter; single sink in the middle and some leaning shelves holding mugs, a few dirty plates and other kitchen paraphernalia. Everything covered in a fine spray of dust. No radio and no television.
While considering the long hours ahead. My thoughts wandered to my last morbid occupation. Mortuary assistant. I’d learned about dead ringers from conversations with another staff member. That job had ended badly and I was hoping I wasn’t in for round two when dealing with the dead.
Dead ringers appeared sometime in the 1700s when hysteria ran rampant. Tales of the dead waking in their graves led to a bunch of swindlers making and selling coffins fitted with safety devices. Just in case.
Designs were creative. Coffins had tubes inserted for air; to keep the person alive until someone came to rescue them. Other models added strings attached to the hands and feet of the dead. The strings led out of the coffin and connected to a bell next to the grave. Ringing the bell, alerted the night-watchman and the interned alive could be freed.
One story had a priest coming to the cemetery at intervals and sniffing the tubes just to see if decomposition had set in. Now, that’s a job even I would never do. Not for any pay day. Nevertheless, waking up six feet under the ground and confined in a box, goes straight into the heading… a thousand ways to re-die.
I hadn’t had time to shake the visions of waking up in my own grave when I heard the bell ringing. Seriously it's crazy…I did hear it, but decided to ignore it. It's just my imagination. Yeah! That’s what I thought. Until someone or something was banging hard on the cabin door, shaking the hinges from their screws.
Right here and now. I don’t have to tell you my eyes became saucers and my heart beat so fast, it started choking me. I couldn’t shut my mouth to stop the blockage. I backed into the farthest corner of the room. My mind awash with fear and hammered by the endless banging. Something slid under the door. I saw it but couldn’t name what it was. Smoke? Then dizziness overwhelmed me and I was falling. A second later everything went dark.
Part Two
“I’ve been waiting a long-time for you… Jason…I know what you did.” The voice sounded hollow and distant, yet at the same time, I could feel a foul cold fluid cut into the back of my neck. Then as if beaten out of paralysis. I moved around searching for the source of the voice. But there was no-one except shadows and gravestones. The darkness had stripped everything down to reality. I had no idea how I came to be in the graveyard.
My stomach churned as visions in an altered mind, induced pictures of a deformed and hideous dwarf. He was pointing at me while surrounded by the carnage of yesteryear. The macabre spectacle danced in a dream before my eyes. However, all I could think was… how did he know? What I had done so long ago. No one knew…Nevertheless, the dream roused scenes I’d rather forget, and I’m telling you… it hadn’t been my fault.
* * *
The stupid cretin fought like a madman. He was just a-nobody, a Bagman. His body found on the street and supposed to be dead. The coroner had left the room and I had just begun preparing the needle and cord to stitch him up for his insignificant burial.
While approaching his naked, cold and dead body. Laying stock-still on the iron slab. I thought. Dead−just a piece of discarded meat. No different from carving up a pig. But I was wrong. We all were… Because a moment later he sat up from stiff paralysis. Looked down at the incisions on his torso, then turned to see his disemboweled entrails on the bench. A silent pause and then he started screaming like a hoard of demons. The dead man’s horrified and appalling shrieks assaulted the atmosphere as the murderous reality of his autopsy came into realization.
Now, I’m thinking... which event is graver? Waking at your own autopsy? Or buried in your coffin?
The horrified Bagman stared at the huge bloody slices of flesh, forming bat wings on his chest; exposing what was left of the harvest. In a flashback−when the cutting was going on. I’d remembered thinking; the-fact-that he was bleeding wasn’t exactly normal. And why the coroner wasn’t concerned… because the dead don’t bleed… Posed more than a few questions of his ethics. I didn’t say anything, because what did I know? I was just an employee, doing my job.
The coroner had broken the dead hobo’s ribs, about twenty minutes ago, and he’d removed specific organs. Kidneys in the cooler. Some dollars, cashed on that organ. Liver in another. But the heart… well that was another story. The coroner had placed it in a jar filled with meth, and left it on the shelf. Right next to the pile of intestines; motionless hollow snakes in a bowl that stunk to high heaven.
Then all hell broke loose.
The dead man lunged at me, but his grip was slack and useless. “You” he screamed, staring at the needle and threat in my hand. “What have you done?” And his voice became a lost wail. That’s when insanity erupted and my voice joined the shrieking chaos. The world seemed awash in an appalling maelstrom of clashing between my shouts of horror and the dead man’s cry to battle. A twisted, hellish spectacle unleashed in a shared blood lusting that battered the walls of the mortuary.
During the commotion, he’d managed to get his hands on the jar holding his heart. His disjointed tries at moving forced him to slip on his own blood, where he fell with a wet thud onto the concrete floor. Smashing the glass and slicing his face. His lifeless heart rolled out-of-reach and meth; in a rapid smear, spread across the ground.
The dead man’s screams rose and gathered substance. He raised himself onto his knees and the rest of his organs spilled in bloody juice. At this point, I’d had enough. I ran to the far wall and seized the gas torch used for burning discarded body matter then turned it to the writhing corpse. In an instant, the meth exploded and was ablaze. The hobo’s body ignited. He started thrashing and burning while shocked accusing eyes filled with mortal grief locked on mine. He howled like an agonized animal, as the stinking red flames erupted and rose to the ceiling.
Standing transfixed and half-conscious. I watched his body lurch and writhe, then a fountain of blood mixed with flames exploded from his throat.
I staggered back from the scorching tendrils of fire leaching from the burning hobo and threatening to engulf me. Standing with my back against the wall, watching the burning scene unfold… I had a curious thought. “Well, old man. This time, you won’t be getting up again.” The idea of remorse never crossed my mind. Because when your dead. You should stay dead!
That was the moment my eyes blew open. It had all been a vivid dream. A conjured experience created by the constant connection to the dead, and my own morbid fascination with horror.
I looked around. I was in the cabin and it was as it had been before I passed out. However, I had been sure; just a moment ago. I was in the graveyard. Maybe, that cold smoke filtering under the door, had affected my mind? Fear had inspired a hallucination that felt so real. Because, back then, while stitching the bagman. I had only imagined... What would happen if he suddenly woke up? It was just a thought. He didn't... and never saw his body again.
I picked up the torch and walked outside into the graveyard. I was going to pay a little visit to the tomb of the Black Dwarf. See for myself if the priest was wandering the cemetery.
* * *
The tombstones were silent. Nevertheless, as always, I had a feeling the dead were watching, and tossing contemptuous curses at me each time I passed their frozen claim.
When I arrived at the Black Dwarfs tomb, there was nothing but silence. The flashlight lit the old headstone. Nothing unusual.
“I’m coming for you Jason.” Said a distant hollow voice. Emanating from just behind my ear.
“Go ahead and try. You bloody Dwarf. It's going take a lot more than dreams and a creepy voice to frighten me.”
I’d had enough of this ridiculous sense of invasion. So, I flipped the birdie and started back towards the cabin. Convinced old Max with his stupid tales of the walking dead had infected me. I wasn’t having any more of it. However, I hadn’t taken more than five steps when the bell started ringing.
Stopping in my tracks. I turned the torch back to the tomb. And there… Perched on the headstone, was the most grotesque gargoyle imaginable… One clawed hand was tolling the bell and the other was pointing at me.
The creature sprang skywards. Bat wings sounding like chomping plastic and beating to a time clock. It hovered just above the grave staring at me with a ghastly intelligence. Then I saw it. Gripped in one swinging leg, clasped in sharp talons, was a steaming human heart.
Moments later, the earth erupted and from graves all around the cemetery. The dead began to rise. That was it. I started running but I didn’t get far. Something unseen lay on the path, and in the dark, I tripped. Then something grabbed my leg in a cold hard grip and was dragging me down.
I struggled with every scrap of strength, after shear panic took over. My hands clawed the ground trying to stop the inevitable. I tried another maneuver. Rolling over, I started kicking at the corpse that wouldn’t let go. And even after I managed to detach its boned head, it still held on. I couldn’t scream because I had nothing but pure terror running through my veins. And it wasn’t long before I saw him. The Black Dwarf. He was standing atop the mound before his headstone. An ugly grotesque presence. Swinging in his left hand was the head of a dead black cat. Its eyes rolling around in its head, as if it were aware of its beheading, but was still alive. The Dwarf moved towards me. A ridiculous specter. Conjured by a sick and twisted mind.
Aware of the imminent danger. I continued to struggle with the stinking corpses, but they gripped me tight. More zombi cadavers fell on top of me and their suffocating grip was inescapable. It was all over and I knew it.
Part Three
At dawn the next morning when Max arrived at the cemetery he found the cabin empty. He didn’t have to wonder what might have happened the night before. He just grumbled some vague curses then headed to the nearby shed. He took the shovel in the corner and lifted the wheelbarrow. Along the path between the tombstones. He picked up an arm here and a leg there. Some entails and Jason’s head. Which he found dripping with blood and resting on the Black Dwarfs tomb. This was typical, because Max had performed the same ritual, time-and -time-again.
“Stupid idjot... I told him… I told him… No one ever listens…” Max moaned as he began digging.
HALLOWED GROUND
C. S. Caspar
Catherine Stepancic/Caspar Copyright © 2018
“It's a predictable world and I’m comfortable with it. But I prefer, not to be in it.”
It was a statement James liked to share and just about everyone in town had heard it. However, the last person to see James was old Clive Wilson. Said, he saw him walking across the field after working his shift at the mine. And then James just blinked out. After that… nobody saw him again.
The whole town was talking and several stories were blowing around. Even from people who had never met him. And, by-the-time the police were involved. Everyone knew he was an artist. Hell, they were already casting lots about the paintings left behind. That is … As soon as the police released the evidence.
I’d come to the tavern that night... two days after the mysterious event. Because I wanted to hear the stories. Nobody aware; I was the only one that knew where James was hiding. And ‘hiding’ was an idiotic word to describe his whereabouts. Because old Clive Wilson wasn't the last person to see James. I was the last.
Sure, constable Peter Crawford interviewed me at length. He was convinced, I had something to do with James` disappearance. After all, we were best friends. Nevertheless, I kept my mouth shut. Because there was no way anyone was going to believe the story, least of all the police. And second. I was having trouble believing the facts myself.
* * *
The whole affair started late one afternoon when James called me to his studio. Said, he had to show me something. A strange item he'd found in Mine Shaft Five. He sounded excited, talking too fast, and I could almost see him on the other end of the line drawing on a joint. At the time … I was thinking… too much weed. But I was wrong. James hadn’t been using crazy grass. He'd found that evil thing at the bottom of mine five. Something so bizarre and out of this world, it bordered on the paranormal.
After picking up a six-pack of beer. I arrived at his studio around six in the afternoon. Thinking, it was going to be a long night, because I’d been through this before. James calling me... He’d finished another canvas. Then asking me to summarize it... He wasn't that good at ink spots. So, I was the one who always wrote the blurb about the piece for the gallery. I was a writer, and he an artist. We worked well together. I had used more than one of James` paintings to inspire a short story.
James and I went to the same school when we were kids. We had grown up in the same street. Even back then. James was a great artist, and we were both certain he would follow an artists career. On the other hand. I loved reading, and almost every summer weekend, we’d go fishing in the nearby Barwon river. Me recounting some novel I had recently read, and he sketching pictures of some visual interpretation of the character in the book I had described. Looking back, they were great times and right now I was missing James and our mateship. I had to find a way to get him back. However, it was going to take a miracle to achieve such an impossible task
* * * By now, you must be wondering what James found at the bottom of Mine Shaft Five? And I’m going to tell you. Even though, as incredible as it sounds. The whole story is true.
That fateful afternoon, James began an incredible story about how he'd found a remarkably colored block of clay. An unusual shade and size. And it wasn’t like anything he had found before.
James enjoyed working with earth pigments, and often brought home, soil, clay and rocks from the mine. Later he would grind his find into a powder and mix binder, some adhesive and linseed oil to make natural earth tints for his paintings. James didn’t like to get his hands dirty, and he worked in the mine just to pay the bills.
Apparently, the strange stone had fallen from the rock wall, after being struck with a pick. Thinking he had found something amazing. He took it home and while removing the clay, he’d found an ancient carving. He said... It was made of petrified charred wood.
So, James` story, at this point, was familiar. He had often shown me various blocks of clay or minerals and how he processed them. I had to ask. “What kind of carving?” James just smiled and replied. “It’s an ancient model of a man. I couldn’t find anything about it on the internet, but I think it's one of the old Celtic Gods.”
“Let me see it.” I said, expecting him to produce the item.
“Sorry. I can’t. It's gone.” He replied.
“Gone? What do you mean it's gone?” I was looking at James like he had just left sanity at the door and entered crazy.
James eyed me, and there was both excitement and confusion in those familiar blue eyes. “After grinding the clay away." He started." I found the carving inside. Not knowing what it was... I searched online. But came up with nothing. However, when I held it in my hand, wondering who could have made it? The charred, wooden figurine began to disintegrate; its pigment just melted into vapor and absorbed into my skin… It was like… sucked into me.”
“What do you mean sucked into you?” I questioned James in disbelief.
“Yeah, sucked in... like it was micro atoms?” He laughed, and I couldn't help but notice there was something strange going on inside his head.
“Micro atoms? What are you talking about?” I was sure James was off his nut. He must be dreaming. Taking a mouthful of beer straight out of the bottleneck I ignored his comment and said. “You need to get off the weed bro.”
“Look!” James walked over to his easel, centering the room, and threw the white cover-sheet to the floor. “I did manage to paint the figure before I forgot what it looked like.”
Leaving the couch I moved over to the painting. What I saw was incredible crap. Nevertheless, a cold shiver ran along my spine forcing me to gooseflesh all over. “What the...!” retreating from the easel my breath caught in my throat.
He’d painted the canvas using the colors he’d ground from the clay, because I could see his pallet and the remaining shards of clay resting on the bench. The painting wasn’t some depiction of an idiotic statue. It was a self-portrait of James. He was wearing scruffy clothes, an old cowboy hat and walking across a field. Behind him, were scenes of a run-down mine. It wasn’t like his usual meticulously detailed work. In this painting. All the brush strokes were running down the canvas in a streaming torrent. And in my incredulous mind. Those strokes were falling into some dark abyss invisible to the eye. I couldn’t believe it. What was he trying to pull? It was a self portrait. What connected this painting with the carving he had found? My state of mind was flying into crazy, because I was thinking… What the hell is going on… There was something seriously wrong with James, and his painting.
James interrupted my thoughts. “Watch this.” He raised his arm and approached the painting with his fingers outstretched. And as they touched the canvas, they went right through. He withdrew his fingers and they were coated with color.
“Isn’t it amazing.” He smiled, then repeated the action with his other hand.
Now, me saying right here. The events unfolding is beyond imagining; is an understatement. I walked over to the painting and tried it for myself. But when I touched the canvas nothing happened. My fingers didn’t pass through; it was just a painting.
James laughed, and the sound made me think he was possessed by some wicked and unspeakable force. Then without a moment to collect my thoughts, he said. “I’ll be seeing you later.”He jumped into the painting and was gone. Leaving me dumbfounded and alone, while a million unanswered questions raged through my mind in waves of confusion and disbelief.
* * *
I stayed in James` studio all-night and most of the next day. Falling in and out of sleep. Hoping James would come back. But he didn’t, and with no other options. I decided to take the painting home… to keep my eye on it. That was three months ago, and still, there is no sign of James.
I’d placed the painting in my lounge room… and I know you think I’m crazy, or, maybe, I’ve had too much weed. But I’m telling you. That painting changes all the time.
James is always the same. He is wearing that old cowboy hat and scruffy clothes. It’s the background that changes. Sometimes he's in Paris. Where I can see the Eiffel tower behind him, and it's not a time in the 20th century. Other days, show him walking through the backstreets of Rome. Where narrow cobblestone streets separate tall apartment buildings with their high and narrow windows. Once, I saw him standing in a London street. Beside him, black carriages and black horses, moving up and down, passing one another, while carrying passengers to and from unknown destinations.
Overtime, my imagination started taking over, and I became accustomed to the paintings` ever changing scenes. Picturing James, living somewhere in other ages, while traveling the world through time and space. I had, shall we say, become comfortable with the story. And, possibly, a little jealous. Nevertheless, the idea James was happy, comforted me. It stemmed the loneliness at losing my best friend.
Everything was going well until… last night.
* * *
I woke from a sweat drenched nightmare. I could have sworn I’d heard James screaming. Something was wrong and I knew it the moment my eyes blew open in the darkness. Throwing the sheets from the bed. I ran into the lounge, flicked on the light and glared at the painting. The painting was where it had always been. Propped against the wall facing the couch. In this position, I had watched it for hours. What I saw now, nearly froze my blood.
James wasn’t in the same strolling position he had been through all the changing backgrounds. James was back in that yellow field, and it appeared he was running from something. His face wasn’t staring out. It was twisted, looking behind him. Where I saw a hooded apparition holding an enormous scythe, and in hot pursuit. It looked like a reaper hell-bent on killing James. I felt the breath knocked out of me. “What the hell?” My legs started shaking and my heart pumped double time. “James,” I called in panic. “Run, James, run.”
Then to my horror, and as if he'd heard me. His head began to turn around. The reaper was closing in. This was the first time I had seen the painting change in front of my eyes. Normally, I would wake each morning and find something different. And the scene would remained the same, until the next day. But now it was happening in live time.
When James` face came into view, his mouth was agape. His hat; blown off, was tumbling in the wind, over the yellow grass. But it was when James` bulging blue eyes collided with mine… I saw shear terror. Then his lips were moving; he was screaming. “Help me Jack. HELP ME…” That was the last straw. My traumatized mind could take no more, and like any respectable coward. I blacked out.
When I opened my eyes. I was on the floor staring at a small carving made from charred wood. The object was no more that a few inches from my face. And that wasn’t all… The self-portrait was gone and what replaced it... was blood, running red and black paint. James and all scenes had disappeared.
Struggling to my feet; my legs were still shaking. How long, had I been out of it? I wasn’t sure, but the sun was well over the horizon, and I barely noticed the fingers of light, filtering through the window, playing shadows with the furniture.
Staring down at the carving, wondering where it had come from, and at-the-same time knowing, it had fallen right out of the canvas. My mind unfolded the night before. “James.” The word a horrified whisper floating into space from my insensible mouth, hoping, he would suddenly appear through the doorway safe and sound.
As I stared at the carving on the floor because I didn't want to touch it. I could have sworn I heard James` voice. It was just an echo sounding from somewhere distant. “Jack, pick it up." It whispered. "I need your help.”
But I didn’t want to touch that thing. What was I going to do? My best friend is calling and he needs me? What was I going to do?
I was going to run. That's what any sane person would have done. But I wasn’t sane. Not anymore. I didn’t know it, but that parasitic carving had infected me, just like it infected James.
* * *
I was never going to see the police report written in the local paper. ‘Murderous painting in yellow fields of grass’ Nor hear the shaded musings of the towns people as they whispered tales of how homicide was committed.
All the evidence, they said, was in a painting found at Jack's house. A painting done by his best friend James, revealing Jack was his killer.
But where was Jack now? What did he do with James` body? A question they never answered. The dream police were never going to find me, just like they would never find James. I, like my best friend; are cursed. He, lost in shards of time, and I, into the pages of this story.
James and I remain trapped in the imaginary and extraordinary world of Words and Art. So, let the reapers come to suck the life from invention. For by the power of creation, we are free and standing on Hallowed ground.
YE`OLDE` ANTIQUE STORE
C. S. Caspar
Catherine Stepancic/Caspar Copyright © 2018
A TRUE STORY
As I open the small timber picket gate and enter the short but meandering path bordered with thick green foliage, I wondered ... 'Does a person’s home reflect their personality?'
The effect of traveling through a shaded tunnel created in green by someone with harbored secrets; leaves imaginary fairies and cheeky gnomes to watch this unwary traveler, and I felt like I'd just entered the twilight zone.
Then thoughts fly towards a strange dream; one that had left its owner’s borders of reality and entered mine.
The antique store set in an old timber home stamps my first impression. I'd stepped into another world…this was no ordinary antique store. Instead, it was the architecture of an artist’s imagination; eccentrically designed, while finding its vision inside the master of surrealism. And its creator had unwittingly revealed her collection of memories for all to see in forgotten dreams. Dreams, that were once real. Dreams of belonging, of living and of love. Dreams, now left behind by former owners and on display; priced into the past.
Moving quietly, gripped by an unexplained sense of secret invasion. I'm consciously aware, yet unable to explain why? I was trespassing in a stranger’s decorated version of former lives. Then, behind me, a small and unearthly voice said, “Hello.”
Disturbed by the inhuman sound, my previous thoughts fall like a stream of confetti. Turning sharply I discover a large cage hidden inside extra thick green foliage. The cage is in an abdominal position and doesn't allow any sunlight to enter the prison; inside is a lone white cockatoo. Once again he said, "Hello" This pleading for attention in that little voice, forces me to turn away less I be tempted to set the bird free.
Moving forward and without entering the store; astounded at the sheer volume of clutter, started my sense of warning . . . 'tread carefully.'
Watching for the small step. I venture into history.
Immediately to my right I see bric-a-brac and furniture stacked haphazardly. The chaos blocking any attempt to reach the end of the hall. Atop the stack and closest to the doorway is a small wicker basket. Sleeping in the centre, on a moth-eaten blanket, lay a hideous, stuffed, gray and white kitten. Obviously, some drunk taxidermist’s idea of a joke.
“Welcome.” Said another voice. “Come inside there is so much more to see.” Followed at once with. “Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?”
“Well it isn’t the stuffed kitten.” I replied rather flippantly. Trying to hide my disgust.
The tall, thickset woman, with dark half tinted curly short hair; hair that had not seen a comb anytime this morning, laughed and said. “Yes, the kitten is . . . rather disgusting.”
Her smile was wide and genuine and I liked her at once. However, those dark feline eyes calculated me with interest, and I wasn’t conned by the faded black T-shirt and leggings that had seen better days. This woman, obviously a native of the Cook Islands, had lost her accent long ago, and she was no pushover. Nor was she a fool and I knew within three minutes, she would have my character summed up to a millimeter of accuracy. She would have decided how much money I may be carrying, and preparing me for negotiations.
At once, a warning signalled in my head. This store would carry no fixed priced items. Sales would reflect each individual customer, based on opinions earned from the owner’s vast experience in people and trading.
Entering the store, I follow her through another door, placing her age around the early sixties. She was still a hardworking, strong woman. And her square features and straight stature confirm she had once been a real beauty. Soon, I was wondering about the men that may have loved her. Visions of a youth that had promised so much, yet offered so little. Events that finally lead her to this quiet country town. Forever, to revel in cold objects of a discarded past. A past that allowed her to itemize her memories and absorb her history.
“Watch your step.” She said, as I follow her through the small packed walkway formed through a maze of glass cabinets filled to bursting with everything imaginable; used, bought and traded antiques. A history of once loved, or gifted goods that became a trader’s gold.
Here and there, along the pathway of yesteryear, are stiff and smiling mannequins dressed in period clothes, while covered in colored shawls and old jewellery. They peeked out from cluttered corners or standing next to heavily laden tables; tables that would never leave this room. And the display of goods made me wonder… if anything was in fact, for sale? Or, had I stepped into a macabre museum? I had no doubt, that most of these items were part of a personal history locked-in their owner’s desire to hoard.
Viewing the displays became secondary to-safety, while negotiating a route along the array of different runners laid haphazardly, one on top of another. The timber floor complained. Sagging and squeaking under the weight of our passing. Towering mountains, where showcases and old tables stand hidden under pots, statues, books and other paraphernalia, threatened to succumb to the white ant invasion. Treading tentatively. I wondered if this was the day the floor would just give up and give way, carrying not only I, but the whole place down into some unending dark hole underground. Some sort of ancient antique hell lurking in wait to swallow all the dreams of dead souls, who left their unending need, attached to items of some tragic past.
“I think you would really like this.” Said the woman distracting me. Then, picked up a statue of a Bali Buddha made in thousands by poverty-stricken individuals. “It's unique.” She added.
I smiled, thinking my deception of ignorance was successful and replied. “No thanks. I’m more interested in the wood carving of the old man with his hands over his ears. It reflects how I’m feeling right now.” Her eyes grew wider as she said, “Well he’s hand carved and only twenty dollars.”
“I’ll take him.” I replied. “For ten.” The clever woman gave me a wry smile. “It’ll be twenty and I’ll throw in the stiff kitten...no charge.” We both laughed and the next few hours followed the lost passages of time in an old hoarder’s tales of antique goods and secret treasures.
TIMES HERO
C S Caspar
Catherine Stepancic/Caspar Copyright © 2018
“Watch out!” Tommy cried. The tunnel was collapsing. A cloud of dust and dirt filled the cave. Paul, caught in the downpour scrambled from the rubble. Tommy grabbed his arm and tugged. When both men were clear of falling stones. Paul was smiling.
“Where are the others?” Paul said, while passing a lunch box to Tommy, then dusting his jacket with his left hand.
“They’re up ahead . . . and damn it, Paul. I told you to leave it alone.”
“Com`on . . . A laptop computer and a lunch box... Down here? I thought we were the first people to set foot in this cave.”
Tommy, not wanting anything to do with the lunchbox, shoved it into Paul’s chest.“Obviously, someone’s been here before. The question is? Why did he leave his stuff?”
“Maybe he hasn’t left. He could be lost or injured.” Paul opened the lunchbox. “Well, he can’t be far away. This food is still okay.”
“Let’s go.” Tommy started towards the left tunnel while speaking over his shoulder. “John will want to have a look at that computer. He’ll find something about its owner.”
The two men entered the tunnel and followed a tight path to cavern three. The other two cavers, John and Mike, were sitting on a large boulder checking equipment.
The four men had entered Screamers Cave early that morning, despite the warnings that monsoonal rains were imminent, and the high risk of underground rivers flooding. But when John insisted. His friends knew there would be no discussion. John, was one stubborn son-of-a-dog with a death wish.
Paul approached John while waving the laptop around. “Have a look at what I found back there with a lunchbox.”
“What the hell is a computer doing down here? Is that a kid’s lunch box?” Mike said, as he moved over to Paul. He snatched the lunchbox from Paul's hand and lifted the lid. “Four apples and four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. What the . . . This is kids’ stuff. What’s he doing down here?”
“Don’t know. You tell me.” Said Paul.
Tommy picked up his backpack. “Hey . . . John. I thought you said no one has explored this cave. No one has been here before us.”
John grumbled something under his breath, obviously annoyed at Tommy’s comment. Then roughly stuffed the rest of his gear into his backpack.
Paul, sat the laptop on a flat rock and lifted the lid.
John frowned. Dropped his backpack on the ground. Then joined the other three men as they gathered around the computer.
“Here, let me have a look.” John shoved Paul aside.
The first picture filling the screen was a smooth-skinned, blue-eyed teenager. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. He was using the computer camera to video outside the cave's entrance. The boy stepped back from the camera and the men saw he had a backpack and a torch. He was wearing blue jeans and a blue jacket.
“Well . . . Hello gentlemen.” Said the boy.” He looked at his wristwatch then back at the screen. “Today is the 20th-September, 2098, and the time is eight-thirty in the morning. As you can see. I’m heading into Screamers Cave.” The boy moved aside and extended his arm showing the mouth of the cave. “Oh, and don’t worry about me. These days, there are steps and lighting. They even added a flying fox to cross the river. Screamers cave . . . a real suburban adventure.”
He introduced himself.
“My name is George Elliot.” His face moved in close to the camera and offered a big infectious smile. Involuntary, the four men smiled back.
John paused the video. “Hang on. Did he say 2098? What’s this stupid kid talking about?”
Mike moved away from the computer screen and was picking up his backpack when he said.“He’s bullshitting. We’re not going to find anything here.”
Tommy, also walked away. “The kid is playing a stupid joke. Stole this computer. Dumped it, and has skedaddled back home where he belongs.”
John decided he’d heard enough. He slapped the lid shut, then he too, walked toward his backpack.
“No way.’ Said Paul. “He wouldn’t leave this computer down here. Why didn’t he take it with him? Something must have happened. I can feel it in my bones.”
“For a forty-five-year-old man, Paul. Your bones do a lot of talking these days.” Tommy chuckled. “It's gonna rain. I can feel it in my bones. This isn’t right. I can feel it in my bones.”
Mike playfully shoved Tommy. “Leave it alone, idiot.” Both men laughed.
Paul, ignoring Tommy’s snide remarks, and the other men's disinterest, lifted the lid on the laptop.
The scene had changed and George was now inside a house. Paul guessed it was a bedroom.
“This is really important.” The blond-haired boy continued his narration.
“Listen up and listen good. Yes, I’m talking to you, Mike Peterson, John Benger, Paul Anderson and Tommy Blair, hoping that you're all watching my video right now. And . . . I know you’re not going to believe anything I say. But you better. Because your lives will depend on it. You have exactly three hours.”
“What the . . . Hey guys, get back here now, you’re not going to believe this.” Paul paused the video.
When the other three men were standing around the laptop. Paul pressed start.
“George moved in close to the camera.
“On September 27 − 2018. A week from today. That’s your today, not mine. You’re bloated and rotting corpses are going to be found floating downriver near Coppermine Mill. That monsoon coming your way in around thirty minutes from now. Is the worst rainstorm to hit the area in one hundred years. The cave is going to flood, and as you probably already know . . . There is no way back. You guys need to go forward and find another way out. But like I said, you don’t have much time.”
“What’s he talking about.” Mike grumbled, while adjusting the straps around his torso securing the pack.
“He knows our friggin` names.” Tommy cried.
George smiled into the screen then popped a stick of chewing gum in his mouth. Spending some seconds chewing before reaching for something on his desk. George slapped an old newspaper clipping against the screen.
The men were now looking at a heading. CAVERS FOUND FLOATING AT COPPERMINE. The rest of the article, dated 2018, explained the circumstances regarding the discovery of their four bloated and dead bodies.
“See . . . I’m not kidding.” Said George, his round-face appearing back on-screen.
The four men stood dumbfounded staring at the screen while watching the unbelievable. All four knew, the monsoonal rains were coming, but no one had mentioned it would be a record making downpour. However, right now. The weather didn’t matter. The men were focused on the idea. This kid claimed he’s living in 2098 and has somehow left a computer in Screamers cave in 2018.
Mike broke the silence. “Holy hell. Does anyone else feel like we’re in the twilight zone?”
The men didn’t have time to collect their thoughts before George began speaking.
“Right about now, you’re curious, but still don’t believe me. And unfortunately, I can’t show you today’s paper because newspapers don’t exist in the future.” George leaned back on his seat in front of the computer. Folded the fingers of both hands behind his head, slouched on his office chair and glanced at the ceiling. Moments passed in infused intimidation. Then George rotated his seat sideways.
The four men standing sentinel in silent expectation, waited for the kid to speak again.
George smiled and decided his little tease was over. He brought his forearm down hard on the table and leaned into the camera. “You won’t know this, but I’m a genius. I’ve created a time machine . . . Well, it's what you might call a time machine in 2018. I can’t personally travel in time. The human body is too complicated, and well . . . After what happened to my lizard . . . But I can send objects through time, like the laptop and the lunchbox.”
“You see guys. In the future. The postal service, is also, non-existent. These days. Every home has a Transporter. It looks a little like your old convection ovens. The Transporter is used to send mail and packages. All you need is the code−to send. Punch it in, then Bingo! Instant delivery. But I did some meddling with our Transporter. Like I said before. I’m a genius. But if my parents find out . . . Oh boy.” George blew lungs full of air, then pressed his face to the screen. “If they knew . . . I’d be dead.”
“Crazy kid Ehi!” Mike laughed and slapped John on the back.
George paused. Then for the benefit of the men viewing, cleared his throat. And as good as any professional actor, recited. “Gentlemen, we are not live yet. But will be in a moment. So, everything I’m saying, is me guessing that you’re watching. If the calculations I made are correct. Using the information gained by historical records of your arrival at the cave, and when the Monsoon hit. I’m estimating, but pretty sure, you are in cavern three−half a mile underground. My further calculations confirm, you have about three hours to get out. If you follow the map.”
“I’ve also calculated the time continuum elapse evaluations, counting in your coordinates. Things you couldn’t begin to understand.” While watching George typing on his computer. The men heard him mumble something about talking to Neanderthals. A moment later, his smile widened. “Got it!”
“I’ve managed to link my time with yours. Allowing me to do this!” George pulled out a piece of folded paper from his pocket and waved it at the men. “This is the map. You’re going to need it to get out. So, watch this space.” George disappeared from the screen and the men were now speechless. While they waited for George to return. They remained quiet, observing the picture on the screen. A quiet room with a perfectly made bed and very tidy bookshelf. Filled with science books.
Short moments passed while the men wondered what was going to happen next. When close by, they saw a blinding flash of light. It lit the cave for less than a second. And from where the light had been, the map appeared. The same map George had been holding on screen, only moments ago.
Mike moved over to the place where the paper appeared and picked it up. “It's warm.” He said, and handed it to John.
John. Opening the folds, Revealed a very detailed map of the cave system. It showed several ways out. However, George had marked in red, the path they were to take.
“Well, I hope you have it.” Said George reaching for something to his left. “Oh Yes. Yes . . . You’re going to make it out . . . Look at this.”
He held up the old newspaper clipping and the story was beginning to fade. In a few moments, the ink had entirely disappeared.
George looked at his wrist watch and smiled. “Well, I’ve done my good deed for today. I’ll see you later . . .” His smile widened. “Or maybe not.” George vanished and what filled the screen was a tattered old novel. ‘Escape from Screamers Cave.’ By Paul Anderson.
“Not a bad read Paul.” Said George. “The chapter I like the most is when you found my computer. And, of course, how you escaped the flood. Nevertheless, I’m always going to wonder whether you ate those sandwiches I made for you. Too bad you left that part out.”
George was gone, and the screen went dark.
FALLING STAR
C S Caspar
Catherine Stepancic/Caspar Copyright © 2019
Sitting on the porch felt like ages, yet at the same time, only a moment. Strangely, I couldn’t remember how I came to be here staring at the vast fields of green. The house seemed familiar. It was the mirror image of the house I’d always dreamed of owning. But I couldn’t remember how I arrived here. In fact, I couldn’t remember much of anything. This didn’t bother me as my gaze shifted to the universe above. And while viewing this spectacular scene; my eyes caught a falling Star.
Watching its fiery decent sparked the sense of Déjà vu. The Star came through earth’s atmosphere like a shooting bullet of light. I watched its journey for some minutes and as it came towards me it got smaller and smaller until it was no bigger than a golf ball. Then, the Star fell in the field, not twenty feet from my position.
I jumped from my seat and ran into the field towards where the Star landed. And it wasn’t long before I found it glowing among blades of grass. When I was close enough to touch it. The Star, as if it knew my intent, hovered in midair. For a short moment, it floated before my eyes. Then of a sudden, it took off across the field, and without a second thought, I was in hot pursuit. It wasn’t going to get away. The Star wasn’t moving fast and soon I’d catch it.
While running, snatching and grabbing at the hovering light. I realized it was intelligent. It didn’t want me to catch it. Time-and-time again, it kept darting out of reach. However, the Star was tiring, and its movement relaxed by the minute. Soon, it was sinking towards earth while its glow flickered like a dying lightbulb.
The opportunity arrived. I rushed and snatched it from the air. Then without another thought; shoved it in my pocket. When I arrived back at the house. I placed the Star in an old birdcage, then sitting the cage on the kitchen table, I watched it. The Star hovered reproachfully as I moved around the perimeter. Moments passed while I tried to discover its origins and the reason I'd been able to catch it so easily. The Star, now trapped, seemed agitated and often rushed the bars in short bursts of frustration.
“Calm down little feller.” I said. “Just sit tight until I figure what I’m supposed to do with you.”
This all happened a week ago, and since then, I keep having the same recurring dream. I’m awake but it’s like the dream is passing before my mind’s eye. A disturbing dream and I’m convinced the Star must have something to do with it. Dreaming started the first night it appeared.
It begins in an unfamiliar street. Its night-time and there are no lights in any of the facing apartment buildings, nor anywhere else in the street. I’m floating just above the ground and moving forward through the dark; when I stop. Before me is a door. Above the door is a shabby sign. It reads: The Sandman number 13. This building, long abandoned, is empty. No one has lived here for many years. I feel compelled to enter. Moving straight through the door without it opening. I glide up the stairs three flights high. Then down the hall until arriving at a derelict, thick timber door. Once again, moving through the door without it opening. I see a little boy sitting on a dirty mattress. The mattress has no base it just lies on the floor. And there are flies. Too many flies. The room is otherwise empty, timeworn, and the walls have bloody scratches all over them. The terrified boy sits with his back against the wall. Tear-stained eyes stare at the door where loud footfalls are heard approaching. The boy begins to shake uncontrollably. I somehow know he has been in this room a very long time. He’s had nothing to eat for days and has soiled himself many times. I see the Star hovering above his head. The extreme atmosphere is one of horror and when the door opens quietly, a dark man enters.
I wake suddenly sweating and terrorized, because I know this is not a dream but a warning. The Star is trying to tell me something. And finding this boy becomes a constant haunting that fills my days. Should I go to the police? And if I do. What would I say…? I had a dream. They would laugh in my face. I had to find the boy myself. Because I knew, if I didn’t act soon. I would never be free of the nightmare. However, it's a big city and I had no idea where to start.
Moving to the birdcage I speak to the Star. “Tell me you little shit. What am I supposed to do? What do you want from me? The Star darted around the cage, then with a voice that sounded inside my head it said. “Free me and I will free you.”
Ignoring the Star’s comment, I ask. “Is this little boy real?”
“Yes.” Replied the Star. “The event you see in your dreams has already happened.”
“When did it happen?”
“A long time ago. Now free me.”
“I’m not going to free you… you’ll just fly away and never come back.”
The Star darted around the cage frustrated. Then it stopped in the centre and began to shimmer. Its light expanded and sparks flew in all directions forcing me to stand back. I thought it was going to explode.
“Calm down little Star.” I offered. “I will set you free. I promise. Once you take me to the building where I can find the boy.” A short stationary vibration followed the Star’s tantrum. “I agree.” It said. “We will go tonight. Now turn on the television.”
Turning on the television as the Star asked. I saw the news-man reporting the abduction and following murder of a young boy. His name was Michael Keane and he was only six years old. He had disappeared from the park twelve days ago. The picture of the boy, on-screen, was the same kid from my dreams.
“See.” Said the Star. “Do you remember now?”
“Remember, remember what? I don’t know what you are talking about, and why have I been dreaming this boy?"
The Star shot around in its cage like it was having another tantrum. Then it stopped and just hovered quietly for moments before it said. “It’s important you understand certain facts.”
Staring at the Star floating in its cage I asked. “Well start talking.”
The Star shimmered and replied. “I’m in your subconscious. We don’t exist in the real world. This is all happening inside a traumatized retention.”
I wasn’t buying it. “Rubbish. I don’t believe you.”
“Okay,” said the Star, “what’s your name?”
I had to think for a moment. Then it came to me in waves of intense realization…. My name is Michael…. Michael Keane. What the hell is going on? Why do I have the same name as that boy in the news report?”
“You need to remember Michael.”
“The Sandman.” I whispered almost to myself.
“There you go.” Said the Star. “Now, where are you?”
I looked around the kitchen and saw all the familiar items that identified with my place in the world. I saw the cage on the table. The television in the corner. The coffee table … and to my surprise. The ghostly appearances of my mother and father. They were holding each other and crying on the black couch. I hadn’t seen my parents in a very long time. I wondered where they had been? Why they looked so young? Why were they crying? And most of all. Why did they appear as ghosts?
“What the hell is going on?” I screamed at the Star. “Are my parents dead?”
“No Michael.” Said the Star. “Your parents are not dead. It is you that is dead. You’re still in that room and the Sandman is always coming.”
“What you see as real, is only an invention created by restless memory. What you think you see, is just residual recollections. You created a world you want to see from something you viewed in a movie. Those scenes resonated with you and how you saw your future as a man. The events that happened to you, so long ago, were so traumatic you still haven’t accepted or dealt with them. And because you can’t let go. You have designed a reality that makes you comfortable. It's your way of dealing with the damage.”
“This is crazy. You’re a crazy, stupid Star. Not possible. I’m a man. I was never in that room. You’re playing mind games with me.”
The Star shimmered and spat light beams across the room. “Your dead Michael, you were murdered when you were six and you have been dead for more than a century. Let me out of this cage and I will take you to another place where you can be happy and forget all the dreams and nightmares.”
“No … I want you to take me to the Sandman. I need to see that boy.”
“Very well.” Replied the Star. “Let’s go now.”
I opened the door to the birdcage. The Star hovered, then passed through the opening. Here it floated before my eyes and for a moment time-passed without noticing. Then we were flying into a parallel universe and it wasn’t long before we were in the room with the dirty mattress, bloody walls and closed door.
Everything I saw was exactly as I had seen it in the dream, except ... The boy on the dirty mattress was dead. He had been dead for some time. The dark man had cut his throat, leaving rats to trouble wounds, face and ears. Michael Keane’s bloated rotting body; devoured long ago by vermin and maggots, left only pale-yellow bones, shredded fabric and dried skin. The body had stayed undiscovered for twelve weeks and when the door blew open, sending thousands of flies into a frenzy, it was the police standing on the threshold. “Oh my God.” Said, one of the officers.
Scenes cloaked in a dim white haze left me viewing the horrible unfolding discovery of my body, while refusing to believe any of it was true. When I approached the police and asked for answers, they couldn’t see, nor hear me.
Turning to the Star, I growled. “You Liar. You’ve done something to my head. This isn’t me. I’m still dreaming. It’s all a terrible nightmare.”
The Star shimmered and replied. “You keep saying that and we have been through this hundreds of times.”
“I’m a man. Look at me… I have a life.”
The Star replied. “The life you have created is your unwillingness to remember what happened to you. You were murdered one hundred and ten years ago. So why don’t you come with me and allow me to take you faraway from this place. I’ll take you somewhere where you will be truly happy.”
“No! Your manipulating me, you little bastard. I know it. I’m not dead. You did this. You’re an evil alien and want to trap me in some alternative existence. Your playing tricks in my mind just so you can be free. I won’t let you go. Not now or ever.” Snatching the Star in midair. I shoved it in my pocket.
* * *
Sitting on the porch felt like ages, and at the same time, only a moment. Strangely, I couldn’t remember how I came to be here staring at the vast fields of green. The house seemed familiar. It was the mirror image of the house I’d always dreamed of owning. But I couldn’t remember how it was that I came to be here. In fact, I couldn’t remember much of anything. This didn’t bother me as my gaze shifted to the universe above. And while viewing this spectacular scene; my eyes caught a falling Star.
HILL 60 ROAD
C S Caspar
Copyright © 2019 Catherine Stepancic Caspar
Disclaimer: The characters and events in this story are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
One Friday night in 1997 Dan Bradley finished his last shift as chief slaughterman at the Sandford Abattoir. He drove home. Had a shower. Changed into black clothes. Combed his short dark hair. Picked up his black kill bag and walked out of his unassuming middle-class suburban house.
Before dawn the next morning, steel workers at the Coppermine Foundry found Dan’s abandoned white pickup truck in the parking lot, still idling. The lights were on and the driver’s door open.
On Monday morning Mrs. Jane Clarke called the police and reported her daughter missing. Amanda had not appeared at school and Jane hadn’t heard from her daughter since Friday afternoon. In that last conversation. Amanda had told her mother she was going out clubbing with some friends. She ended the conversation with... “I love you.”
Half an hour after Jane’s call, two police officers knocked on her door.
Amanda Clarke was a fit and pretty-blond with large oval blue eyes. She was in her final year at University. The chosen vocation was forensic anthropology. Her dreams; to join the FBI. Amanda kept her body in shape and visited the gym five days a week. Two years ago, she made black belt in Karate. Amanda was working hard towards her goal and had always been a straight-A student. However, confidence and preparation had not considered the imminent meeting with Dan Bradley’s taser.
Part One
Dan didn’t start life in a broken home, nor did he have a drunken father who beat him regularly. His mother wasn’t a domineering troll that controlled his every thought. His childhood was a happy one. An only child with normal working-class parents. Life had been fun. He had many school friends and summer holidays were regular gatherings at back yard BBQ’s. Dan never had a pet. Even though he’d begged and begged his parents for a puppy.
Until he was fifteen, and before the family moved states. Dan Bradley had been a normal well-adjusted teenager.
Dan’s father was a town planner, and when they offered him a transfer to a new a position in Devon. He jumped at the opportunity. Both Dan’s mother and father were excited about the change in events. However, Dan wasn’t. Not only because he was forced to leave his friends and the school he liked. But because Dan had a deep gut reaction, and it happened in the exact moment he’d been told they were moving. A foreboding of something coming … something imminent, dark and wicked. But he was just the kid. His parents paid the bills. “Sorry son.” His father said, when Dan complained. “We’re moving and that’s final.”
Two days after arriving at Hill 60 Road. Dan’s parents disappeared. He searched. He did. But it wasn’t until the next night that Dan found his parents corpses. Their bodies all bloodied and dismembered. Slimy fluid painted the walls and floor; the windows and blinds. Leaving corpus all over the bedroom.
Whom-ever had killed them. Had taken a considerable amount of time, because their teeth had been removed and arranged on display next to two severed noses; the pliers used, and a bloody gray hack-saw. On the mirror above the dresser. The murderer had soaked a finger in blood and drawn a smiley face.
When the police arrived. They found nothing… no evidence of a crime. The bedroom was tidy and appeared normal. Nothing was amiss. They didn’t see what Dan saw; the blood and guts of his dismembered and murdered parents. This strange fact confused him. And as Dan told his story over and over. The police didn’t believe him.
And who would? Because by now. Dan Bradley wasn’t a normal well-adjusted teenager. He had lost his mind.
What happened to Dan at Hill 60 road? What catalyst changed this perfectly normal boy into a schizo? How did his parents’ lives’ end in murder? And who did it? No evidence was found to incriminate. And even with the lack of bodies. The police found no blood spatter on his clothes or shoes. No motive and no evidence that a crime had been committed. The police couldn’t charge him on unsubstantiated claims, nor the fact that he was crazy. And crazy doesn’t necessarily prove murder.
Dan was a minor and the attending shrinks held to their analysis… Dan… now without parents, wasn’t mentally fit to be placed in a foster home. Instead, they sent him to a sanitorium.
Dan Bradley was forgotten. His parents were forgotten. And the case went stone cold.
Part Two
As this unbelievable story begins to uncover its mysteries, you will find, Hill 60 Road had a history. And as haunting's go. It was ancient and darker than hell.
It wasn’t something in the house that haunted it… not some evil demon that possessed it… not some dead and cursed predecessor that won’t let it go. The house itself was evil. A sinister and obsessed house. Prehistoric and weird, with a terrifying past … its unexpected arrival in an ordinary forest tells a strange story.
It all started long before Dan Bradley had been released from the sanitarium when he was twenty-five.
***
Seventy-five years ago, the house just appeared. No one ever built it. No records showed who may have owned it. The land had never been sold, and it wasn’t part of some development.
The house had arrived. By itself, and out of nowhere. Setting its foundations on crown-land; inside Dartmoor’s Heritage listed forest. Ten years passed while Devon County Council exhausted all avenues and debates about how, or who built that house in the forest. And when the police couldn’t help. No one to blame, and no one to charge. The Council decided to tear it down.
That all happened about sixty-eight years ago. And sixty-eight years, isn’t a long time to forget what happened to those men. The ones that had been there. The ones that had used hammer and axes. And even though, by dusk on that fateful day; when the house was destroyed and the land clear. When next morning dawned to blue skies and cool winds. The house was right back where it had been the day before. Just as shiny and new, as if nothing had happened.
In four months, all the work-men vanished. As time wore on, and the authorities could find no trace of the men, they classified their absence; as presumed dead. They were good men. Men that had happy families and steady jobs. And because the disappearances were linked to the demolition. No one ever tried to destroy that house again. Council abandoned it and no one ever−lived there.
As the many years rolled by and for such an old house. Not one nail was rusted. Not a piece of paint missing or peeling. Not a spec of dust on the windows. And the surrounding garden always looked like bushes were pruned and lawns mowed. Nevertheless, a lot of other people went missing in that forest after that house appeared. A hell of a lot.
So, by now, you may be wondering. How did the Bradley family end up moving into that house? Well I’m going to tell you, but not right now. Now, I must tell you what happened in the hours before those workers at Coppermine Foundry found Dan Bradley’s abandoned white pickup truck.
Part Three
It was one in the morning when thirty-four-year-old Dan Bradley drove his pickup into the Coppermine car park. He didn’t turn the engine off because his mind was a twisted maze. Distorted thoughts wailed through his brains like rats, spinning round and round on a screeching wheel lost in time. He kept looking over his shoulder expecting to see some monstrous figure. Someone he felt was hunting him. He’d seen it before. Many times, before. A malignant corpse. A black Shadow. His shadow, the one that had crawled right out of his body when he was fifteen. It happened in that house. That evil fuckin` house.
Dan’s family came there because the other house Council had organized for the Bradley’s, was still under renovation. With no other options, the CEO offered the Bradley family the house in Dartmoor forest as a temporary arrangement. They didn’t tell the Bradley’s about the houses` dark history. Perhaps, because eight-five years had passed, with nothing untoward, or strange phenomenon taking place. It was assumed it would be safe for the family to stay . . . temporarily.
Dan remembered when he was fifteen, standing by the car looking toward the house. How he had begged his parents not to enter. But they wouldn’t listen, and the minute Dan had walked into that house. He had seen the shadows crawling along the walls and floor in every room. Shadows that were screaming into his mind trying to send warnings. How he saw that every wall, every door and every floor was made from human bones and skin. Bodies ancient and present, wreathed in tortured history; living in an agony that would never end. But his parents didn’t see it… they didn’t see anything but a house that was build of brick and mortar.
Dan squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t stand the visions that relentlessly, haunted him. Apparitions of an ancient curse that tore prehistoric claws into his brain. Soon his fingers were tearing into his hair. Not registering pain, he ripped strands and clumps. But when the frenzy passed, and he opened his eyes again. There she was … illumined by the headlights and standing before the bonnet as solid as a picture. The dead woman, he had just murdered. Her ghost rose before his eyes in flowing strands of illumined gray cloud. The once pretty-blond; her body… now a rotting murdered corpse bound inside the walls and mortar of Hill 60 road. Amanda pointed at him. Locked accusing vicious eyes on him … This had never happened before.
As his body rolled through a meat grinder. Dan screamed in disbelief; refusing to believe the vision before him. He thumped his palms on the steering wheel. “It isn’t real. It isn’t real. Get away from meee…” He shrieked. “Get out of here. Leave me alone.”
But the spectres wouldn’t let go, leaving Dans mind awash with confusion. He couldn’t understand what was happening. And as he turned, once again, to look behind him . . . the ghosts of all the pretty girls immured in Hill 60 Road, arose in hostile eerie shades descending on the vehicle.
Dan cried; louder this time. He threw open the driver’s door and ran into the dark. Leaving behind his bloodied black kill bag and enough evidence to convict him to the gallows.
However, the police where never going to find Dan Bradley, nor his body. They were not going to find Amanda’s corpse, or any of the other women Dan murdered. Because what the police didn’t know. What no one knew; was the dead women and those men who had torn the house down so many years ago, had merged into the cursed house and its foundations.
Part Four
Long ago. After the last ice age. Devon was one of the first places in England people settled. And it was in Dartmoor forest that the house on Hill 60 Road was created. This occurrence happened in an era where superstition ran rampant. When it was believed that the walls of any new building, be it castle, house or bridge. Could not stand unless a human victim, be it child or adult, was sealed alive into the foundations. Many cultures and countries practised this abhorrent act. And the story tells; people actually−sold their children so they could be built into foundations. So, while I write this tale, it is hard to believe; this practice continued right into the late 15th century. Anyone building a structure must offer ‘a meal for the dead.’ A living person interred in the walls was of utmost importance and the more significant the victim the better.
In 1309 one such happening occurred. However, the builder of this house on Hill 60 Road, inside the Dartmoor. Could not bring himself to immure a live human into its foundations. He instead, had another plan. And invited the local and powerful witch to cast a spell, ensuring the dead were appeased and his house would stand. This was but a ruse, for he had come to terms with a better idea. The man planned to steal her shadow. Convinced that a shadow is just as good as a living body. For the belief, back then, was…someone’s shadow is the mirror of their soul. Stealing a shadow would appease the deity and the ‘meal for the dead’ would be pacified.
While the witch was moving around the foundations, voicing all manner of incantations. Chants that assured the house would stand for one-hundred years. She did not notice when the man secretly measured her shadow. And it wasn’t until she returned to Devon that she noticed her shadow had vanished.
The man waited not a minute upon seeing the woman leave, when he quickly buried her shadows` measure under the foundation stone. Confidant that stealing her shadow instead of her life would sit well with his conscience. However, within a year the witch was dead. For without her shadow, the witch could not survive. Nevertheless, she knew what the man had done, and before she died, she cursed that house. For the rest of eternity, it would collect the shadows of all those who entered, including its builder and his family. She swore the house could never be destroyed by any means. And until her shadow was returned, she would not pass into the afterlife.
The house became the devil's bridge. All those that entered its walls would lose their shadow. As the witch had lost hers. The house would then bind their dead bodies and blood into the walls and foundations. Leaving shadows to wonder through its rooms and halls. For each one hundred years, the house would collect bodies and shadows, and then disappear for the next one hundred years. Only to reappear in another forest in the following cycle. Over the centuries the house had grown bigger and bigger. For each body interned into the walls and mortar added to its size.
***
In the dark, leaving his pickup idling and the contents exposed. Dan headed south towards the forest. Running from the murdered ghostly terrors that pursued him. Breathless and confused he arrived at the house on Hill 60 Road before dawn. It had now been ninety-nine years and ninety-nine days since the house first appeared in Dartmoor forest.
The front door was open, and without looking behind him, where hundreds of ghostly spirits stood pointing at the house. Dan quietly, walked inside.
The malevolent house on Hill 60 Road disappeared the next day. Leaving no trace of its former existence. Dan Bradley was never seen again, and all truth be told, no one cared. The murders and disappearances in Devon ceased without explanation.
One-hundred years later, in Rivington Wood, Lancashire, a house appeared. No one knew who put it there, and no records of who built it were discovered.
WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT
Copyright © Catherine Stepancic Caspar 2020
I bought that cursed house nestled in the backwoods, and admittedly without doing due diligence, but at the time it seemed ideal. The large suburban three-bedroom timber home, painted in my favorite color, lemon yellow, checked all the boxes. I had made my decision, and anyway, I had nowhere else to go.
A week after moving in I started my new job at the school. Teaching primary school was all I’d hoped for and was the first position I’d been offered after leaving college. The children were wonderful, and life seemed pretty normal.
Six months had passed, and I was dug-in like a tick on a dog and at this point in time, I can attest that nothing untoward or strange had happened. Not that I was expecting complications.
Therefore, what happened next was completely unforeseen. And it happened one bright Saturday morning after the seemingly, kindly neighbor Janice Brown arrived at my front door in a floral blue dress, homemade biscuits and a smile. Her cheerful urban manner and unguarded persistence proved she was eager for conversation.
I didn’t know it then, but my comfortable security was about to be shattered. Her shadow darkening my doorway was going to change everything.
As any good neighbor would do, I invited her in, and for the next hour, we drank coffee and made small talk. However, it wasn’t long before I noticed Janice was acting strange.
“Have you heard anything unusual? She asked, changing the subject to something more sinister. It was then I noticed her voice was lofty, yet at the same time, curious… “Perhaps, noises coming from the basement at night?” she eased cautiously in her seat and pushed her coffee cup to the center of the table.
Although there was nothing visually disturbing about Janice's sudden doubts about this woman flooded in. Despite what my innermost fears were screaming; I couldn’t ignore the chill creeping stealthily through the house. Nevertheless, her questions forced me to cast involuntary, probing glances around the room. Janice did the same, and a long intimidating silence filled the tense atmosphere.
Her nearness and odd behavior felt immediately tangible. Her aura changed and now felt dense and filled with shadow. The questions she’d asked had shifted the mood. Only an hour ago she had appeared normal. Was she touched in the head? The woman hadn’t just come over for an introductory visit. She wanted something.
There had been no indication that her recital was about to set the dark horror in motion. And even if I wanted her out of my house, she had set my curiosity towards a haunted path. Skeletons of past events were laid free to crawl and howl like lurking predators rising within every breath inhaled and exhaled.
The air in the room suddenly dropped ice-cold and an unpleasant odor filled the space. The sensation of something contagious struck me all at once. And more than anything, I wanted this woman to leave. There was something deviant about Janice. A frightful abnormality and I was certain she was a sick and twisted individual. ‘The woman is out of her own mind.’ But words did not honor me, and the sensation of self-control snapped like boots that crushed brushwood. However, one sane thought kept my mouth shut… She was playing me in a crafty, patient attempt to over-balance my strength and sanity.
By now my interest had become far-reaching tentacles that started searching this woman’s motivations. I decided to play along with her dark tricks and stay in control of the conversation. I asked my own questions. “Janice. What do you really want to say? You obviously came here to disclose something you know about this house.”
Janice looked away and then pushed her chair back from the table as if she wanted to create a greater distance between us. “Have you heard anything unusual at night?” she repeated, flippantly, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and even as she said it, her eyes closely explored mine as if expecting to find the answer she was looking for.
I waited before replying, allowing the brief battle of wills to continue. I then shook my head. “No. Nothing unusual.”
Janice gazed at me with wide wolves eyes. “Are you sure?” her tone was menacing.
“Yes. I’m sure.” I snapped, suspecting this strange woman had become a hideous predator. She was raving mad and I’d let her in.
Silently cursing my stupidity and in words coated in venom, I said. “What’s this all about Janice? Why are you asking me stupid questions?”
Janice looked around the room with an air of frightful significance, and when again, she turned to me her emerging defiance was tangible. “I’m not asking stupid questions.” This reply was mechanical and detached.
Then wide fitful eyes restlessly surfed the room scanning every doorway, wall and hall. She glanced behind, side to side and I studied her carefully. Her actions were weird, and I had the distinct impression she was monitoring whether someone in the walls was listening. A moment later she vigorously, almost unconsciously, started scratching her left hand with her right.
Janice moved her chair back into the table and leaned towards me, still scratching the top of her hand where she had torn the skin and it was bleeding. “I need to tell you something.” She whispered over narrow eyes.
A threatening rising panic demanded I appease her. I moved back on my chair and folded my arms, deciding to remain in an artificial position. “Please… do tell.” I said, sarcastically, but inner wisdom kept on screaming dire warnings. I had to get her out of my house, and as soon as possible.
Janice began… “The couple that owned this house before you, disappeared without a trace. They lived here for only eight months and then… poof, gone. Leaving behind their vehicle, their clothing and everything else. The police never found them. And well… since then. Everyone in town stays away from here. Word is going around about this house… it’s haunted.”
Janice shifted nervously in her chair. She threw furtive glances over her shoulder. Forcing me to do the same. However, she had opened a can of worms and I had more questions.
“Okay, so who were they? And what do you think happened to them?”
“Nathaniel and Mary Pearce,” That was their names, yes… yes… Nathaniel and Mary. Janice’s mood had shifted once again, her speech was guttural, and her words tortured. She stopped scratching the back of her hand and now moved to nervously scratch the back of her neck. “They came here from upstate a year ago and it wasn’t long before Mary and I were close. I liked Mary, she was a nurse and a pretty blond. Her husband Nathaniel was a doctor.” Janice paused then and an evil smirk crossed her face. “The perfect couple, don’t you think?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about but decided to say nothing. Nevertheless, my eyes couldn’t hide fascination. Even though, I doubted every word that came out of her sick mouth.
“It was Nathaniel that was transferred here from Texas, and well… because Mary was in the same industry, she wasn’t going to have problems getting a job, now was she? Janice said this last statement with sour venom and envy.
Janice leaned closer then whispered. Do you know what Mary told me? She told me they were going to start a family. A family? Why would they want to do that?” Janice rolled her eyes, licked her lips and blew air from her lungs. Both hands now scratched her neck and her head wobbled from side to side, but it wasn’t long before nervous eyes resumed scanning the room.
“Why do you keep doing that?” I asked.
“Doing what?” she replied and immediately stopped scratching or performing any other weird activities.
I decided to let the question go and she too ignored any further answer.
I found myself slipping into a most hideous relationship with this woman. It was apparent that Janice had an unnatural connection to the house. Like she knew it intimately, and when, once again, she started fidgeting, I let it go because there was no denying I was now trapped in this mystery, and I won’t refute the old warning… curiosity killed the cat.
“It was just six months after they arrived in this house when Mary changed. Six months, just like you.” Janice paused repeated the room scanning and scratching then said. “Mary became withdrawn and skittish. When, I asked her what was wrong? She told me that every night, both she and her husband heard ghoulish and persistent knocking rising from the basement.”
“Did they find out what was making the noises?” I asked, playing along.
“No. I don’t think so.” Janice replied. “However, Nathaniel did go into the basement, but he found nothing. Later he called Pest control; they also found nothing. Nat then called a builder to inspect the foundations. But even the builder gave the house the all-clear. However, after all these things… it didn’t stop the knocking.”
Janice’s demeanor became morbid. She started trembling. I watched as her body language revealed overwhelming guilt. Her mind seemed to be consuming some terrible horror. Her eyes widened as if she had seen someone in the hallway. “I shouldn’t be here.” Janice jumped from her seat sending the chair tumbling over. “Can we please go outside?” it was almost apathetic pleading.
I hadn’t the time to offer a response when we both heard knocking. It was a hollow echo that repeated through the rooms and undoubtedly coming from regions deep beneath the house. Janice paled and before I had time to react, her feet were moving, she started running for the front door, and was outside before I had time to realize the change in events.
“Wait!” I cried as I raced after her into the front yard, down the slate path to the front white picket gate. “Janice wait…” But I couldn’t speak with her again, she had vanished; down the street and inside her own house.
Standing on the footpath for a few moments revising the disjointed and incredible story Janice had told. I resolved that I was going to get to the bottom of this mystery.
When I’d purchased the house. The paperwork had offered no disclosure about its past history. Nor did anyone mention the disappearance of the former owners.
Doubt was becoming an infectious scraping through my mind. Even though, I assumed Janice was crazy. I’d decided to call the real estate agent. Determined to ask him some pertinent questions.
Turning away from the street. I re-entered my house intent on going for the phone. Either Janice was insane, or her story was true. I needed to know.
However, I never made that call because while closing the front door behind me. I heard knocking. Louder than when Janice was in the house, and it was coming from the basement. I needed to discover the nature and appearance of those impossible sounds.
Taking a torch from the kitchen cupboard then moving down the hall. I opened the basement door. Down the stone steps, I arrived on a dirt floor. Here while shifting the light from corner to corner, I waited. A few minutes passed, no sound. I turned off the torch and stood in the dark. Knock… Knock… Knock… I practically jumped out of my skin and immediately turned on the torch. With my heart pounding bongo’s while I looked around, I still couldn’t discern where those sounds were coming from. The light scanned the floor. Nothing but dirt… Knock… Knock… I heard it again. It was directly under my feet.
Running back up the stairs I took a heavy broom from the closet and then returned to the basement. Sweeping the dirt away, I revealed an unmistakable timber trap door. I had known nothing about this when I bought the house. And while sweeping more dirt from its surface. I discovered a large iron ring set on one edge, and it appeared someone had attached an old cast iron lock to seal it. There was no key.
“Hello… is anyone down there?” I called into the dark while hitting the flat of my hand on the timber. “I’m going to get you out. Just hang in there.”
Knock… Knock…Knock…
“I can hear you. I’ll be back in a moment. I have to go and get something to break the lock.”
Knock…Knock…
While running up the basement stairs and out to the garden shed to get a hammer. I wondered if Nathaniel and his wife Mary were somehow trapped underground. It didn’t occur to me that a year had passed, and even if they were down there. They would be long dead from starvation and thirst.
Five minutes later, I was back in the basement, hitting the lock with the hammer. It was old and rusted, but with constant battering, it broke. Lifting the cast iron ring. I opened the trap door. But I did not find the faces of those trapped below, all that appeared was infinite darkness. “Hello,” I called, and the eerie echo offered no answer.
Directing the torchlight into the opening, without considering the implications, and with Nathaniel and Mary in mind. I went down the stone stairs into the darkness. Once reaching the bottom, the torchlight opened a view into a long dark tunnel. The atmosphere smelled musty and rotten, and the unmistakable scent of decomposition penetrated my nose and mouth. Choked by the stench. I covered my face with the collar of my shirt, then continued down the tunnel. “Hello… Is anyone down here?” the muffled sound almost a whisper through the fabric.
Nothing. No response.
It seemed I had been traveling a long time in the tunnel before arriving at the dead and rotting corpses of two individuals. A terrifying image of two lovers lying in an embrace. Their bodies a melded sculpture of dead tissues and rotted garments. They were, without a doubt. Nathaniel and Mary Pearce.
Scanning the surrounding area with the torch, the light beams spotted frightful numbers of older skeletons. Their skins rotted long ago, leaving only stained bones to reveal their former lives. Skeletons of the discarded, unfound and forgotten. The entombment had erased their lives, and it was… as if they had never existed.
Leaving not a minute to contemplate how these corpses had come to this demise when I heard the trap door close sharply, followed by the sound of someone slipping a lock. I heard it distinctly as it clicked into place. Realization slapped my face with stupidity. Then my mind flashed visions of an anticlimax; a non-expected horror regarding my predicament. Knowing the implications, that I was now locked in this tunnel with no way out. I ran from the horrible scene back the way I’d come. But it was too late. When reaching the top of the stairs… and no matter how hard I pushed. The trap door would not open. I was caught like a mouse in a trap and no one knew I was down here. ‘Is this what happened to Nat and Mary? Did they come exploring and then get locked down here never to find an escape?’ The questions were plausible and at the same time terrifying.
Banging forever banging in complete hopelessness for someone to come open the door. All the while knowing this action was futile, but cold panic made me do it anyway. Time seemed unending and had taken a more sinister mantle.
Hideous thoughts came in waves of fear. Who had locked me down here?
The question was stupid; it could be none other than Janice. Janice the evil pretender. She had orchestrated this event and I swore if I ever escaped, I would strangle her with my own bare hands. Yet the nagging gut feeling kept haunting me. Janice would never set foot in my house again, not until the next unsuspecting person bought the house. The thought that even though the other teachers at the school will wonder what had happened to me they would never find the trap door and set me free before I starved and died like these other poor wretched souls. Soon, the reality of my monstrous situation throttled any efforts of reason. Disheartened, I turned away from the trap door… There had to be another way out. I began retracing my steps down the infinite dark tunnel, wondering how long the batteries would last in such a small torch. A rattled mind searched memory. When did I last change the batteries? But it didn’t matter. There was nothing I could do about it now. All that was left was to try and get control of my emotions and to steady the ever-growing panic that I may end up like Nathaniel and Mary Pearce, and the rest of those dead and unnamed victims.
Almost Immediately, it felt like hours I’d been walking through this hellish tunnel searching for an exit. Passing more and more skeletons of long-dead people. I had no idea where I was, or if the tunnel would ever end. Thirst and hunger made me tired. Each time another corpse came into view. I wondered if they’d felt what I was feeling now. Did they give up hope? Did their lights go out? What evil, had trapped us all down here and why?
The loathsome questions would never be answered, and this twisted tunnel of death filled with rotting yesterdays would inevitably choke me with nameless probability. I wanted to sit down. I was drained and scared. But inside, that little voice; the one who kept me going all my life, warned me… if you stop, you will die like all the others.
Time was immeasurable as I kept going, dragging sluggish feet. Losing count of minutes and unthinkable days I’d been trapped in inner earth beneath the surface of sunlight. Time, it seemed, had lost its value in the darkness and thirst was a living crawling sensation that threatened to drive me insane.
I was weakening and my body craved sleep. How long had I been down here? The question had no foundation and the tunnel was unrelenting, never-ending and the deeper I ventured the thinner the air. It was stifling, and I found it hard to breathe.
Listless steps moved me forward, then the torch flickered, and the light went out. I hit the torch time and gain hoping the light would shine once more but I knew deep down the batteries were dead. Standing in the blackness not moving forward nor backward the horror of my predicament burned inside my soul, sending terror through my bones while I waited, lost, undecided and afraid.
“Hello, my pretty.” Said a voice in the darkness, its foul echo filtering through the tunnel with a hideous and grotesque craving. Something solid, cold and wet touched my cheek and I started screaming.
* * * *
Janice smiled as she threw the key into the bottom kitchen drawer amongst the others. Her mind awash with memories of a tragic past. Where fragments of recollection tethered in appalling, grisly yesterdays. Her father, unkempt and deeply savage had found the tunnel under the foundations of Baker street. It was he, that built the trapdoor.
Janice was raised in that house, and after her father died, the bank had come to take it because she couldn’t pay. Janice had no mother. She’d lost her when she was ten, and it wasn’t from an illness or desertion. It was because her father had murdered her. Put her corpse in the tunnel with all the other pretty girls he’d found on the street jogging or at supermarket car parks.
Janice, a long-time servant to the newspaper cuttings; flipped the pages of her stash. Since she was a child, she’d glued all the articles of the women father stole into her diary. Now gloating over pictures and stories of all the missing girls. Stolen girls forever lost in a dreadful past. The obscure innocence, that father sealed in endless cruelty and darkness.
Grotesque and macabre experiences assailed Janice’s fragile mind, even as she remembered how much she loved her long-dead father, and how he had loved her more. It was he that had taught her exactly how to love. His touch a venom felt inside like fingers probing her womanhood. It was father, that touched her like no other, caressing currents that passed without regrets. Father taught her how to kill and it was she that had ultimately killed him.
She had taken the axe and fixed it in his skull then dragged his bloody body down into the basement and dumped it in the tunnel. Nevertheless, the damage had been done and even this vengeful act had not freed her from his calling, where ghostly fingers still grazed her skin forever touching and tormenting. Even now his craving for fresh skin and blood was all he wanted. So to appease him she had plotted and planned, a way to feed his endless desire.
Mandy was stupid just like Nat and Mary. Daddy had a new toy to play with and Janice was certain he would leave her dreams alone, at least, until next time.
Seated at her kitchen table the scrapbook open, she shuddered before reaching a hand between her legs and flesh tingled with fire and ice. The shockwave jolted nerves that reached out from her body leaving flowing distortions of her power and delivering sensations that made her feel alive. Sucking in her breath a cold croak sounded deep in her throat; it resonated through the empty room…“I have delivered another gift; Daddy please leave me alone.”
She closed the scrapbook, “It’s our house… Ours.
MALEVOLENCE
The world is dark and disturbing, and sanity is evil.
Copyright © Catherine Stepancic Caspar 2020
Long and senseless days lure him nearer to madness, and madness is an endless road; a hopeless existence, that leads him like a scuttling idiot ever closer to the edge of lunacy. Even sleep eludes him. For slumber creates visible and tangible creatures haloed in a thousand tormented faces; monstrous visions that crawl savagely inside his suffering mind in dreadful repetition. Panic boils in hollow gray eyes—eyes that are gloomy empty shadows. Eyes that cannot see consideration in truth. Drawn into blackness, vile voices conjure echo’s only found in memories. Howling voices that never find peace, nor rest.
Tonight has become another cruel agony where lurking predators haunt the realm of dreams. Stepping out of shadows is no place for a solitary human, a living skeleton who crawled out of a polluted womb. A great shudder, like a shockwave, runs through his scrambled childhood and even though he knows, these savage screams are born in barren and remote places; unburied in sacred ground. He also knows regrets have no emissary, no messenger, no exhortation to stand against the pain in his head.
Desolation is his own nemesis… this dead-end intention that brings unthinkable secrecy, where darkness calls for justice, and the voice of insanity is loud and menacing. Determination threatens his final act, a perverted obstinacy that only offers helplessness even as it steals breath. Life has strangled security and only a secret promise can bargain with fear, panic, loneliness, confusion and thus bring deliverance. And although the words are hissed inside his mind, his lucid understanding is an insult to insanity. Death in obscurity is a deliberate act and is justified premeditation.
Silence, empty silence… It was happening again… he’s alone and they’re coming… coming for him… He hears them… repetitious marching footsteps, faint then louder, coming, coming… uncontrollable terror assaults his senses and stricken with fear, he waits…
“Vengeance is mine, until the end of time,” the leprous voices scream; demonic sounds that cut through the icy cold fog in a devil's war chant. The cold gray mist descends, it's horror-filled with menace, and covers him in a blanket of panic. And while his grip on reality begins to fade. He watches as emerging terrors leach from the ghostly gray overlay. A thousand earthen ruins, crawling, tearing, scratching, squeezing sanity in bare and frozen claws.
Reason has all but gone as visions of hellish cattle caught in a bordered path, begin to rise in tortured shadows. Sounds of bellowed sorrow and utter fear echo through the atmosphere, and the smell of blood is thick in trembling flesh. The creatures walk in single file towards the hammer of death and the slaughter that follows. Still alive, hooks are driven into hocks; hoisted and while aware, but immobile; feverish and petrified eyes, watch death coming with knives as sharp as ice.
Butchery is a long shadow who’s whistling hiss sounds a peculiar ballad, this song of knife and stone grinding a primitive and unsanctified act. The conveyer moves slowly around the ceiling, dragging heavy beasts hanging on chains ever moving towards the cold steel that carves their throats. Blood squirts then gushes to the floor, and long shadow’s oblivion to the creature before him; begins a savage frenzy; cutting and cutting, carving, and slicing, bones and tendons, tails and testicles.
Seconds remain before life becomes fodder and the creature remembers the rain, the moon, and green meadows. Senses explode in tides of revelation as searing pain comes swiftly, but reality is only a moment before the mercy of death delivers peace.
Outside an eerie storm is looming, and the distant sound of thunder and lightning heightens behind the dark door. This door to the underworld is in his soul and the storm in his thoughts. As the vision passes, he almost tempts to look within; but he knows, to do so, will expose every unnamed demon in a red sea of hate and bitterness. ‘Experience is evidence,’ says the ugly voice of repetition. ‘Beware’ the words scorching every appalling echo inside his mind. ‘Don’t do it’ delivers more proof of an ancient warning. But he knows. He has always known. When venturing inward, his soul will surely see… Not cattle that walk the channel, but instead, the swollen shadows of ghostly humans; tortured naked specters. Silent, expecting, afraid, heads downcast in wretchedness, as they move along in single file. Sedately shuffling like phantasmic forms towards the gates of Hell.
The damned is aware, as is he, that an end by one’s own hand, leads to eternal suffering. Hell is unending punishments served in vengeance, and only reserved for souls that ruined their earthly existence by accepting a cowards defeat.
The world's beauty has now passed. Imprisoned by his own mind while expecting an experience he has yet to explore. And even as guilt threatens to warn away the possibility of escape. He will not be discouraged nor prevented from fulfilling his destiny. This has happened before. So many times, and in so many places. Determined to follow through, unless he forever remains a prisoner in this miserable torment of a baron and broken Earth.
The menacing footfalls come closer, lurking, chilling, grating entities of his own creation. He knows he cannot flee, for the darkness stroked inside the realms of mind gnaw like rotting phantoms of imagination. His visions are haunting; the unplayed pain found only in broken dreams, and misery in madness is darker than bleeding wraiths.
When the visions begin to flow like water, he smells the scent of roasting pig. “This is the last time,” he promises the empty room and his voice is unrecognizable. Cold fumbling fingers reach for the loaded shotgun laying on the kitchen table and he shivers as the moment approaches. Placing the butt of the gun on the floor he leans forward then raises the barrel to his chin.
Suddenly transfixed, his finger on the trigger, unable to believe his eyes, he meets, across the table, the distended hallucination of himself. A gruesome reflection. His sickly pale corpse hideously bloated; a hellish death mask; the savage remains of what is left of his head. Skin and bone and blood paint the walls and ceiling. The final visceral manifestation of his imminent future. Malignant laughter spills from the maggoty presence and the wicked sound grates like nails scratching inside his head. Self-devouring pain is intolerant and darker than regret. Darker than the storm when it delivers an attempt to capture his heartbeat. But he’s not human anymore. He’s only a spectator in a dreadful thriller. A festering anomaly full of inside stuff—he pulls the trigger.
In this nameless place, he walks at the back of the line, alone through the gallows of death. A phantasmic specter amid other grotesque spirits. Here, the smell of roasting pig intensifies, leaving a heavy vapor laden with visions of what will come. Marching footsteps; again, he hears them. However, they are not—not footsteps but the hammer behind the door, rising and falling and crushing and smashing in morbid vicious horror. Bloodcurdling screams, unrelenting and continuous, crack the atmosphere as he moves closer and closer to extermination. Hell's door is but three paces away.
Far underneath the torment beneath this world of terror and deceit. The dead man’s earthly body is sentenced to a heap of dust and ashes. A spiteful irony carved on the headstone intends to censure the deed.
Rest in Peace.
End
C. S. Caspar
Catherine Stepancic/Caspar Copyright © 2018
“It's a predictable world and I’m comfortable with it. But I prefer, not to be in it.”
It was a statement James liked to share and just about everyone in town had heard it. However, the last person to see James was old Clive Wilson. Said, he saw him walking across the field after working his shift at the mine. And then James just blinked out. After that… nobody saw him again.
The whole town was talking and several stories were blowing around. Even from people who had never met him. And, by-the-time the police were involved. Everyone knew he was an artist. Hell, they were already casting lots about the paintings left behind. That is … As soon as the police released the evidence.
I’d come to the tavern that night... two days after the mysterious event. Because I wanted to hear the stories. Nobody aware; I was the only one that knew where James was hiding. And ‘hiding’ was an idiotic word to describe his whereabouts. Because old Clive Wilson wasn't the last person to see James. I was the last.
Sure, constable Peter Crawford interviewed me at length. He was convinced, I had something to do with James` disappearance. After all, we were best friends. Nevertheless, I kept my mouth shut. Because there was no way anyone was going to believe the story, least of all the police. And second. I was having trouble believing the facts myself.
* * *
The whole affair started late one afternoon when James called me to his studio. Said, he had to show me something. A strange item he'd found in Mine Shaft Five. He sounded excited, talking too fast, and I could almost see him on the other end of the line drawing on a joint. At the time … I was thinking… too much weed. But I was wrong. James hadn’t been using crazy grass. He'd found that evil thing at the bottom of mine five. Something so bizarre and out of this world, it bordered on the paranormal.
After picking up a six-pack of beer. I arrived at his studio around six in the afternoon. Thinking, it was going to be a long night, because I’d been through this before. James calling me... He’d finished another canvas. Then asking me to summarize it... He wasn't that good at ink spots. So, I was the one who always wrote the blurb about the piece for the gallery. I was a writer, and he an artist. We worked well together. I had used more than one of James` paintings to inspire a short story.
James and I went to the same school when we were kids. We had grown up in the same street. Even back then. James was a great artist, and we were both certain he would follow an artists career. On the other hand. I loved reading, and almost every summer weekend, we’d go fishing in the nearby Barwon river. Me recounting some novel I had recently read, and he sketching pictures of some visual interpretation of the character in the book I had described. Looking back, they were great times and right now I was missing James and our mateship. I had to find a way to get him back. However, it was going to take a miracle to achieve such an impossible task
* * * By now, you must be wondering what James found at the bottom of Mine Shaft Five? And I’m going to tell you. Even though, as incredible as it sounds. The whole story is true.
That fateful afternoon, James began an incredible story about how he'd found a remarkably colored block of clay. An unusual shade and size. And it wasn’t like anything he had found before.
James enjoyed working with earth pigments, and often brought home, soil, clay and rocks from the mine. Later he would grind his find into a powder and mix binder, some adhesive and linseed oil to make natural earth tints for his paintings. James didn’t like to get his hands dirty, and he worked in the mine just to pay the bills.
Apparently, the strange stone had fallen from the rock wall, after being struck with a pick. Thinking he had found something amazing. He took it home and while removing the clay, he’d found an ancient carving. He said... It was made of petrified charred wood.
So, James` story, at this point, was familiar. He had often shown me various blocks of clay or minerals and how he processed them. I had to ask. “What kind of carving?” James just smiled and replied. “It’s an ancient model of a man. I couldn’t find anything about it on the internet, but I think it's one of the old Celtic Gods.”
“Let me see it.” I said, expecting him to produce the item.
“Sorry. I can’t. It's gone.” He replied.
“Gone? What do you mean it's gone?” I was looking at James like he had just left sanity at the door and entered crazy.
James eyed me, and there was both excitement and confusion in those familiar blue eyes. “After grinding the clay away." He started." I found the carving inside. Not knowing what it was... I searched online. But came up with nothing. However, when I held it in my hand, wondering who could have made it? The charred, wooden figurine began to disintegrate; its pigment just melted into vapor and absorbed into my skin… It was like… sucked into me.”
“What do you mean sucked into you?” I questioned James in disbelief.
“Yeah, sucked in... like it was micro atoms?” He laughed, and I couldn't help but notice there was something strange going on inside his head.
“Micro atoms? What are you talking about?” I was sure James was off his nut. He must be dreaming. Taking a mouthful of beer straight out of the bottleneck I ignored his comment and said. “You need to get off the weed bro.”
“Look!” James walked over to his easel, centering the room, and threw the white cover-sheet to the floor. “I did manage to paint the figure before I forgot what it looked like.”
Leaving the couch I moved over to the painting. What I saw was incredible crap. Nevertheless, a cold shiver ran along my spine forcing me to gooseflesh all over. “What the...!” retreating from the easel my breath caught in my throat.
He’d painted the canvas using the colors he’d ground from the clay, because I could see his pallet and the remaining shards of clay resting on the bench. The painting wasn’t some depiction of an idiotic statue. It was a self-portrait of James. He was wearing scruffy clothes, an old cowboy hat and walking across a field. Behind him, were scenes of a run-down mine. It wasn’t like his usual meticulously detailed work. In this painting. All the brush strokes were running down the canvas in a streaming torrent. And in my incredulous mind. Those strokes were falling into some dark abyss invisible to the eye. I couldn’t believe it. What was he trying to pull? It was a self portrait. What connected this painting with the carving he had found? My state of mind was flying into crazy, because I was thinking… What the hell is going on… There was something seriously wrong with James, and his painting.
James interrupted my thoughts. “Watch this.” He raised his arm and approached the painting with his fingers outstretched. And as they touched the canvas, they went right through. He withdrew his fingers and they were coated with color.
“Isn’t it amazing.” He smiled, then repeated the action with his other hand.
Now, me saying right here. The events unfolding is beyond imagining; is an understatement. I walked over to the painting and tried it for myself. But when I touched the canvas nothing happened. My fingers didn’t pass through; it was just a painting.
James laughed, and the sound made me think he was possessed by some wicked and unspeakable force. Then without a moment to collect my thoughts, he said. “I’ll be seeing you later.”He jumped into the painting and was gone. Leaving me dumbfounded and alone, while a million unanswered questions raged through my mind in waves of confusion and disbelief.
* * *
I stayed in James` studio all-night and most of the next day. Falling in and out of sleep. Hoping James would come back. But he didn’t, and with no other options. I decided to take the painting home… to keep my eye on it. That was three months ago, and still, there is no sign of James.
I’d placed the painting in my lounge room… and I know you think I’m crazy, or, maybe, I’ve had too much weed. But I’m telling you. That painting changes all the time.
James is always the same. He is wearing that old cowboy hat and scruffy clothes. It’s the background that changes. Sometimes he's in Paris. Where I can see the Eiffel tower behind him, and it's not a time in the 20th century. Other days, show him walking through the backstreets of Rome. Where narrow cobblestone streets separate tall apartment buildings with their high and narrow windows. Once, I saw him standing in a London street. Beside him, black carriages and black horses, moving up and down, passing one another, while carrying passengers to and from unknown destinations.
Overtime, my imagination started taking over, and I became accustomed to the paintings` ever changing scenes. Picturing James, living somewhere in other ages, while traveling the world through time and space. I had, shall we say, become comfortable with the story. And, possibly, a little jealous. Nevertheless, the idea James was happy, comforted me. It stemmed the loneliness at losing my best friend.
Everything was going well until… last night.
* * *
I woke from a sweat drenched nightmare. I could have sworn I’d heard James screaming. Something was wrong and I knew it the moment my eyes blew open in the darkness. Throwing the sheets from the bed. I ran into the lounge, flicked on the light and glared at the painting. The painting was where it had always been. Propped against the wall facing the couch. In this position, I had watched it for hours. What I saw now, nearly froze my blood.
James wasn’t in the same strolling position he had been through all the changing backgrounds. James was back in that yellow field, and it appeared he was running from something. His face wasn’t staring out. It was twisted, looking behind him. Where I saw a hooded apparition holding an enormous scythe, and in hot pursuit. It looked like a reaper hell-bent on killing James. I felt the breath knocked out of me. “What the hell?” My legs started shaking and my heart pumped double time. “James,” I called in panic. “Run, James, run.”
Then to my horror, and as if he'd heard me. His head began to turn around. The reaper was closing in. This was the first time I had seen the painting change in front of my eyes. Normally, I would wake each morning and find something different. And the scene would remained the same, until the next day. But now it was happening in live time.
When James` face came into view, his mouth was agape. His hat; blown off, was tumbling in the wind, over the yellow grass. But it was when James` bulging blue eyes collided with mine… I saw shear terror. Then his lips were moving; he was screaming. “Help me Jack. HELP ME…” That was the last straw. My traumatized mind could take no more, and like any respectable coward. I blacked out.
When I opened my eyes. I was on the floor staring at a small carving made from charred wood. The object was no more that a few inches from my face. And that wasn’t all… The self-portrait was gone and what replaced it... was blood, running red and black paint. James and all scenes had disappeared.
Struggling to my feet; my legs were still shaking. How long, had I been out of it? I wasn’t sure, but the sun was well over the horizon, and I barely noticed the fingers of light, filtering through the window, playing shadows with the furniture.
Staring down at the carving, wondering where it had come from, and at-the-same time knowing, it had fallen right out of the canvas. My mind unfolded the night before. “James.” The word a horrified whisper floating into space from my insensible mouth, hoping, he would suddenly appear through the doorway safe and sound.
As I stared at the carving on the floor because I didn't want to touch it. I could have sworn I heard James` voice. It was just an echo sounding from somewhere distant. “Jack, pick it up." It whispered. "I need your help.”
But I didn’t want to touch that thing. What was I going to do? My best friend is calling and he needs me? What was I going to do?
I was going to run. That's what any sane person would have done. But I wasn’t sane. Not anymore. I didn’t know it, but that parasitic carving had infected me, just like it infected James.
* * *
I was never going to see the police report written in the local paper. ‘Murderous painting in yellow fields of grass’ Nor hear the shaded musings of the towns people as they whispered tales of how homicide was committed.
All the evidence, they said, was in a painting found at Jack's house. A painting done by his best friend James, revealing Jack was his killer.
But where was Jack now? What did he do with James` body? A question they never answered. The dream police were never going to find me, just like they would never find James. I, like my best friend; are cursed. He, lost in shards of time, and I, into the pages of this story.
James and I remain trapped in the imaginary and extraordinary world of Words and Art. So, let the reapers come to suck the life from invention. For by the power of creation, we are free and standing on Hallowed ground.
YE`OLDE` ANTIQUE STORE
C. S. Caspar
Catherine Stepancic/Caspar Copyright © 2018
A TRUE STORY
As I open the small timber picket gate and enter the short but meandering path bordered with thick green foliage, I wondered ... 'Does a person’s home reflect their personality?'
The effect of traveling through a shaded tunnel created in green by someone with harbored secrets; leaves imaginary fairies and cheeky gnomes to watch this unwary traveler, and I felt like I'd just entered the twilight zone.
Then thoughts fly towards a strange dream; one that had left its owner’s borders of reality and entered mine.
The antique store set in an old timber home stamps my first impression. I'd stepped into another world…this was no ordinary antique store. Instead, it was the architecture of an artist’s imagination; eccentrically designed, while finding its vision inside the master of surrealism. And its creator had unwittingly revealed her collection of memories for all to see in forgotten dreams. Dreams, that were once real. Dreams of belonging, of living and of love. Dreams, now left behind by former owners and on display; priced into the past.
Moving quietly, gripped by an unexplained sense of secret invasion. I'm consciously aware, yet unable to explain why? I was trespassing in a stranger’s decorated version of former lives. Then, behind me, a small and unearthly voice said, “Hello.”
Disturbed by the inhuman sound, my previous thoughts fall like a stream of confetti. Turning sharply I discover a large cage hidden inside extra thick green foliage. The cage is in an abdominal position and doesn't allow any sunlight to enter the prison; inside is a lone white cockatoo. Once again he said, "Hello" This pleading for attention in that little voice, forces me to turn away less I be tempted to set the bird free.
Moving forward and without entering the store; astounded at the sheer volume of clutter, started my sense of warning . . . 'tread carefully.'
Watching for the small step. I venture into history.
Immediately to my right I see bric-a-brac and furniture stacked haphazardly. The chaos blocking any attempt to reach the end of the hall. Atop the stack and closest to the doorway is a small wicker basket. Sleeping in the centre, on a moth-eaten blanket, lay a hideous, stuffed, gray and white kitten. Obviously, some drunk taxidermist’s idea of a joke.
“Welcome.” Said another voice. “Come inside there is so much more to see.” Followed at once with. “Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?”
“Well it isn’t the stuffed kitten.” I replied rather flippantly. Trying to hide my disgust.
The tall, thickset woman, with dark half tinted curly short hair; hair that had not seen a comb anytime this morning, laughed and said. “Yes, the kitten is . . . rather disgusting.”
Her smile was wide and genuine and I liked her at once. However, those dark feline eyes calculated me with interest, and I wasn’t conned by the faded black T-shirt and leggings that had seen better days. This woman, obviously a native of the Cook Islands, had lost her accent long ago, and she was no pushover. Nor was she a fool and I knew within three minutes, she would have my character summed up to a millimeter of accuracy. She would have decided how much money I may be carrying, and preparing me for negotiations.
At once, a warning signalled in my head. This store would carry no fixed priced items. Sales would reflect each individual customer, based on opinions earned from the owner’s vast experience in people and trading.
Entering the store, I follow her through another door, placing her age around the early sixties. She was still a hardworking, strong woman. And her square features and straight stature confirm she had once been a real beauty. Soon, I was wondering about the men that may have loved her. Visions of a youth that had promised so much, yet offered so little. Events that finally lead her to this quiet country town. Forever, to revel in cold objects of a discarded past. A past that allowed her to itemize her memories and absorb her history.
“Watch your step.” She said, as I follow her through the small packed walkway formed through a maze of glass cabinets filled to bursting with everything imaginable; used, bought and traded antiques. A history of once loved, or gifted goods that became a trader’s gold.
Here and there, along the pathway of yesteryear, are stiff and smiling mannequins dressed in period clothes, while covered in colored shawls and old jewellery. They peeked out from cluttered corners or standing next to heavily laden tables; tables that would never leave this room. And the display of goods made me wonder… if anything was in fact, for sale? Or, had I stepped into a macabre museum? I had no doubt, that most of these items were part of a personal history locked-in their owner’s desire to hoard.
Viewing the displays became secondary to-safety, while negotiating a route along the array of different runners laid haphazardly, one on top of another. The timber floor complained. Sagging and squeaking under the weight of our passing. Towering mountains, where showcases and old tables stand hidden under pots, statues, books and other paraphernalia, threatened to succumb to the white ant invasion. Treading tentatively. I wondered if this was the day the floor would just give up and give way, carrying not only I, but the whole place down into some unending dark hole underground. Some sort of ancient antique hell lurking in wait to swallow all the dreams of dead souls, who left their unending need, attached to items of some tragic past.
“I think you would really like this.” Said the woman distracting me. Then, picked up a statue of a Bali Buddha made in thousands by poverty-stricken individuals. “It's unique.” She added.
I smiled, thinking my deception of ignorance was successful and replied. “No thanks. I’m more interested in the wood carving of the old man with his hands over his ears. It reflects how I’m feeling right now.” Her eyes grew wider as she said, “Well he’s hand carved and only twenty dollars.”
“I’ll take him.” I replied. “For ten.” The clever woman gave me a wry smile. “It’ll be twenty and I’ll throw in the stiff kitten...no charge.” We both laughed and the next few hours followed the lost passages of time in an old hoarder’s tales of antique goods and secret treasures.
TIMES HERO
C S Caspar
Catherine Stepancic/Caspar Copyright © 2018
“Watch out!” Tommy cried. The tunnel was collapsing. A cloud of dust and dirt filled the cave. Paul, caught in the downpour scrambled from the rubble. Tommy grabbed his arm and tugged. When both men were clear of falling stones. Paul was smiling.
“Where are the others?” Paul said, while passing a lunch box to Tommy, then dusting his jacket with his left hand.
“They’re up ahead . . . and damn it, Paul. I told you to leave it alone.”
“Com`on . . . A laptop computer and a lunch box... Down here? I thought we were the first people to set foot in this cave.”
Tommy, not wanting anything to do with the lunchbox, shoved it into Paul’s chest.“Obviously, someone’s been here before. The question is? Why did he leave his stuff?”
“Maybe he hasn’t left. He could be lost or injured.” Paul opened the lunchbox. “Well, he can’t be far away. This food is still okay.”
“Let’s go.” Tommy started towards the left tunnel while speaking over his shoulder. “John will want to have a look at that computer. He’ll find something about its owner.”
The two men entered the tunnel and followed a tight path to cavern three. The other two cavers, John and Mike, were sitting on a large boulder checking equipment.
The four men had entered Screamers Cave early that morning, despite the warnings that monsoonal rains were imminent, and the high risk of underground rivers flooding. But when John insisted. His friends knew there would be no discussion. John, was one stubborn son-of-a-dog with a death wish.
Paul approached John while waving the laptop around. “Have a look at what I found back there with a lunchbox.”
“What the hell is a computer doing down here? Is that a kid’s lunch box?” Mike said, as he moved over to Paul. He snatched the lunchbox from Paul's hand and lifted the lid. “Four apples and four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. What the . . . This is kids’ stuff. What’s he doing down here?”
“Don’t know. You tell me.” Said Paul.
Tommy picked up his backpack. “Hey . . . John. I thought you said no one has explored this cave. No one has been here before us.”
John grumbled something under his breath, obviously annoyed at Tommy’s comment. Then roughly stuffed the rest of his gear into his backpack.
Paul, sat the laptop on a flat rock and lifted the lid.
John frowned. Dropped his backpack on the ground. Then joined the other three men as they gathered around the computer.
“Here, let me have a look.” John shoved Paul aside.
The first picture filling the screen was a smooth-skinned, blue-eyed teenager. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. He was using the computer camera to video outside the cave's entrance. The boy stepped back from the camera and the men saw he had a backpack and a torch. He was wearing blue jeans and a blue jacket.
“Well . . . Hello gentlemen.” Said the boy.” He looked at his wristwatch then back at the screen. “Today is the 20th-September, 2098, and the time is eight-thirty in the morning. As you can see. I’m heading into Screamers Cave.” The boy moved aside and extended his arm showing the mouth of the cave. “Oh, and don’t worry about me. These days, there are steps and lighting. They even added a flying fox to cross the river. Screamers cave . . . a real suburban adventure.”
He introduced himself.
“My name is George Elliot.” His face moved in close to the camera and offered a big infectious smile. Involuntary, the four men smiled back.
John paused the video. “Hang on. Did he say 2098? What’s this stupid kid talking about?”
Mike moved away from the computer screen and was picking up his backpack when he said.“He’s bullshitting. We’re not going to find anything here.”
Tommy, also walked away. “The kid is playing a stupid joke. Stole this computer. Dumped it, and has skedaddled back home where he belongs.”
John decided he’d heard enough. He slapped the lid shut, then he too, walked toward his backpack.
“No way.’ Said Paul. “He wouldn’t leave this computer down here. Why didn’t he take it with him? Something must have happened. I can feel it in my bones.”
“For a forty-five-year-old man, Paul. Your bones do a lot of talking these days.” Tommy chuckled. “It's gonna rain. I can feel it in my bones. This isn’t right. I can feel it in my bones.”
Mike playfully shoved Tommy. “Leave it alone, idiot.” Both men laughed.
Paul, ignoring Tommy’s snide remarks, and the other men's disinterest, lifted the lid on the laptop.
The scene had changed and George was now inside a house. Paul guessed it was a bedroom.
“This is really important.” The blond-haired boy continued his narration.
“Listen up and listen good. Yes, I’m talking to you, Mike Peterson, John Benger, Paul Anderson and Tommy Blair, hoping that you're all watching my video right now. And . . . I know you’re not going to believe anything I say. But you better. Because your lives will depend on it. You have exactly three hours.”
“What the . . . Hey guys, get back here now, you’re not going to believe this.” Paul paused the video.
When the other three men were standing around the laptop. Paul pressed start.
“George moved in close to the camera.
“On September 27 − 2018. A week from today. That’s your today, not mine. You’re bloated and rotting corpses are going to be found floating downriver near Coppermine Mill. That monsoon coming your way in around thirty minutes from now. Is the worst rainstorm to hit the area in one hundred years. The cave is going to flood, and as you probably already know . . . There is no way back. You guys need to go forward and find another way out. But like I said, you don’t have much time.”
“What’s he talking about.” Mike grumbled, while adjusting the straps around his torso securing the pack.
“He knows our friggin` names.” Tommy cried.
George smiled into the screen then popped a stick of chewing gum in his mouth. Spending some seconds chewing before reaching for something on his desk. George slapped an old newspaper clipping against the screen.
The men were now looking at a heading. CAVERS FOUND FLOATING AT COPPERMINE. The rest of the article, dated 2018, explained the circumstances regarding the discovery of their four bloated and dead bodies.
“See . . . I’m not kidding.” Said George, his round-face appearing back on-screen.
The four men stood dumbfounded staring at the screen while watching the unbelievable. All four knew, the monsoonal rains were coming, but no one had mentioned it would be a record making downpour. However, right now. The weather didn’t matter. The men were focused on the idea. This kid claimed he’s living in 2098 and has somehow left a computer in Screamers cave in 2018.
Mike broke the silence. “Holy hell. Does anyone else feel like we’re in the twilight zone?”
The men didn’t have time to collect their thoughts before George began speaking.
“Right about now, you’re curious, but still don’t believe me. And unfortunately, I can’t show you today’s paper because newspapers don’t exist in the future.” George leaned back on his seat in front of the computer. Folded the fingers of both hands behind his head, slouched on his office chair and glanced at the ceiling. Moments passed in infused intimidation. Then George rotated his seat sideways.
The four men standing sentinel in silent expectation, waited for the kid to speak again.
George smiled and decided his little tease was over. He brought his forearm down hard on the table and leaned into the camera. “You won’t know this, but I’m a genius. I’ve created a time machine . . . Well, it's what you might call a time machine in 2018. I can’t personally travel in time. The human body is too complicated, and well . . . After what happened to my lizard . . . But I can send objects through time, like the laptop and the lunchbox.”
“You see guys. In the future. The postal service, is also, non-existent. These days. Every home has a Transporter. It looks a little like your old convection ovens. The Transporter is used to send mail and packages. All you need is the code−to send. Punch it in, then Bingo! Instant delivery. But I did some meddling with our Transporter. Like I said before. I’m a genius. But if my parents find out . . . Oh boy.” George blew lungs full of air, then pressed his face to the screen. “If they knew . . . I’d be dead.”
“Crazy kid Ehi!” Mike laughed and slapped John on the back.
George paused. Then for the benefit of the men viewing, cleared his throat. And as good as any professional actor, recited. “Gentlemen, we are not live yet. But will be in a moment. So, everything I’m saying, is me guessing that you’re watching. If the calculations I made are correct. Using the information gained by historical records of your arrival at the cave, and when the Monsoon hit. I’m estimating, but pretty sure, you are in cavern three−half a mile underground. My further calculations confirm, you have about three hours to get out. If you follow the map.”
“I’ve also calculated the time continuum elapse evaluations, counting in your coordinates. Things you couldn’t begin to understand.” While watching George typing on his computer. The men heard him mumble something about talking to Neanderthals. A moment later, his smile widened. “Got it!”
“I’ve managed to link my time with yours. Allowing me to do this!” George pulled out a piece of folded paper from his pocket and waved it at the men. “This is the map. You’re going to need it to get out. So, watch this space.” George disappeared from the screen and the men were now speechless. While they waited for George to return. They remained quiet, observing the picture on the screen. A quiet room with a perfectly made bed and very tidy bookshelf. Filled with science books.
Short moments passed while the men wondered what was going to happen next. When close by, they saw a blinding flash of light. It lit the cave for less than a second. And from where the light had been, the map appeared. The same map George had been holding on screen, only moments ago.
Mike moved over to the place where the paper appeared and picked it up. “It's warm.” He said, and handed it to John.
John. Opening the folds, Revealed a very detailed map of the cave system. It showed several ways out. However, George had marked in red, the path they were to take.
“Well, I hope you have it.” Said George reaching for something to his left. “Oh Yes. Yes . . . You’re going to make it out . . . Look at this.”
He held up the old newspaper clipping and the story was beginning to fade. In a few moments, the ink had entirely disappeared.
George looked at his wrist watch and smiled. “Well, I’ve done my good deed for today. I’ll see you later . . .” His smile widened. “Or maybe not.” George vanished and what filled the screen was a tattered old novel. ‘Escape from Screamers Cave.’ By Paul Anderson.
“Not a bad read Paul.” Said George. “The chapter I like the most is when you found my computer. And, of course, how you escaped the flood. Nevertheless, I’m always going to wonder whether you ate those sandwiches I made for you. Too bad you left that part out.”
George was gone, and the screen went dark.
FALLING STAR
C S Caspar
Catherine Stepancic/Caspar Copyright © 2019
Sitting on the porch felt like ages, yet at the same time, only a moment. Strangely, I couldn’t remember how I came to be here staring at the vast fields of green. The house seemed familiar. It was the mirror image of the house I’d always dreamed of owning. But I couldn’t remember how I arrived here. In fact, I couldn’t remember much of anything. This didn’t bother me as my gaze shifted to the universe above. And while viewing this spectacular scene; my eyes caught a falling Star.
Watching its fiery decent sparked the sense of Déjà vu. The Star came through earth’s atmosphere like a shooting bullet of light. I watched its journey for some minutes and as it came towards me it got smaller and smaller until it was no bigger than a golf ball. Then, the Star fell in the field, not twenty feet from my position.
I jumped from my seat and ran into the field towards where the Star landed. And it wasn’t long before I found it glowing among blades of grass. When I was close enough to touch it. The Star, as if it knew my intent, hovered in midair. For a short moment, it floated before my eyes. Then of a sudden, it took off across the field, and without a second thought, I was in hot pursuit. It wasn’t going to get away. The Star wasn’t moving fast and soon I’d catch it.
While running, snatching and grabbing at the hovering light. I realized it was intelligent. It didn’t want me to catch it. Time-and-time again, it kept darting out of reach. However, the Star was tiring, and its movement relaxed by the minute. Soon, it was sinking towards earth while its glow flickered like a dying lightbulb.
The opportunity arrived. I rushed and snatched it from the air. Then without another thought; shoved it in my pocket. When I arrived back at the house. I placed the Star in an old birdcage, then sitting the cage on the kitchen table, I watched it. The Star hovered reproachfully as I moved around the perimeter. Moments passed while I tried to discover its origins and the reason I'd been able to catch it so easily. The Star, now trapped, seemed agitated and often rushed the bars in short bursts of frustration.
“Calm down little feller.” I said. “Just sit tight until I figure what I’m supposed to do with you.”
This all happened a week ago, and since then, I keep having the same recurring dream. I’m awake but it’s like the dream is passing before my mind’s eye. A disturbing dream and I’m convinced the Star must have something to do with it. Dreaming started the first night it appeared.
It begins in an unfamiliar street. Its night-time and there are no lights in any of the facing apartment buildings, nor anywhere else in the street. I’m floating just above the ground and moving forward through the dark; when I stop. Before me is a door. Above the door is a shabby sign. It reads: The Sandman number 13. This building, long abandoned, is empty. No one has lived here for many years. I feel compelled to enter. Moving straight through the door without it opening. I glide up the stairs three flights high. Then down the hall until arriving at a derelict, thick timber door. Once again, moving through the door without it opening. I see a little boy sitting on a dirty mattress. The mattress has no base it just lies on the floor. And there are flies. Too many flies. The room is otherwise empty, timeworn, and the walls have bloody scratches all over them. The terrified boy sits with his back against the wall. Tear-stained eyes stare at the door where loud footfalls are heard approaching. The boy begins to shake uncontrollably. I somehow know he has been in this room a very long time. He’s had nothing to eat for days and has soiled himself many times. I see the Star hovering above his head. The extreme atmosphere is one of horror and when the door opens quietly, a dark man enters.
I wake suddenly sweating and terrorized, because I know this is not a dream but a warning. The Star is trying to tell me something. And finding this boy becomes a constant haunting that fills my days. Should I go to the police? And if I do. What would I say…? I had a dream. They would laugh in my face. I had to find the boy myself. Because I knew, if I didn’t act soon. I would never be free of the nightmare. However, it's a big city and I had no idea where to start.
Moving to the birdcage I speak to the Star. “Tell me you little shit. What am I supposed to do? What do you want from me? The Star darted around the cage, then with a voice that sounded inside my head it said. “Free me and I will free you.”
Ignoring the Star’s comment, I ask. “Is this little boy real?”
“Yes.” Replied the Star. “The event you see in your dreams has already happened.”
“When did it happen?”
“A long time ago. Now free me.”
“I’m not going to free you… you’ll just fly away and never come back.”
The Star darted around the cage frustrated. Then it stopped in the centre and began to shimmer. Its light expanded and sparks flew in all directions forcing me to stand back. I thought it was going to explode.
“Calm down little Star.” I offered. “I will set you free. I promise. Once you take me to the building where I can find the boy.” A short stationary vibration followed the Star’s tantrum. “I agree.” It said. “We will go tonight. Now turn on the television.”
Turning on the television as the Star asked. I saw the news-man reporting the abduction and following murder of a young boy. His name was Michael Keane and he was only six years old. He had disappeared from the park twelve days ago. The picture of the boy, on-screen, was the same kid from my dreams.
“See.” Said the Star. “Do you remember now?”
“Remember, remember what? I don’t know what you are talking about, and why have I been dreaming this boy?"
The Star shot around in its cage like it was having another tantrum. Then it stopped and just hovered quietly for moments before it said. “It’s important you understand certain facts.”
Staring at the Star floating in its cage I asked. “Well start talking.”
The Star shimmered and replied. “I’m in your subconscious. We don’t exist in the real world. This is all happening inside a traumatized retention.”
I wasn’t buying it. “Rubbish. I don’t believe you.”
“Okay,” said the Star, “what’s your name?”
I had to think for a moment. Then it came to me in waves of intense realization…. My name is Michael…. Michael Keane. What the hell is going on? Why do I have the same name as that boy in the news report?”
“You need to remember Michael.”
“The Sandman.” I whispered almost to myself.
“There you go.” Said the Star. “Now, where are you?”
I looked around the kitchen and saw all the familiar items that identified with my place in the world. I saw the cage on the table. The television in the corner. The coffee table … and to my surprise. The ghostly appearances of my mother and father. They were holding each other and crying on the black couch. I hadn’t seen my parents in a very long time. I wondered where they had been? Why they looked so young? Why were they crying? And most of all. Why did they appear as ghosts?
“What the hell is going on?” I screamed at the Star. “Are my parents dead?”
“No Michael.” Said the Star. “Your parents are not dead. It is you that is dead. You’re still in that room and the Sandman is always coming.”
“What you see as real, is only an invention created by restless memory. What you think you see, is just residual recollections. You created a world you want to see from something you viewed in a movie. Those scenes resonated with you and how you saw your future as a man. The events that happened to you, so long ago, were so traumatic you still haven’t accepted or dealt with them. And because you can’t let go. You have designed a reality that makes you comfortable. It's your way of dealing with the damage.”
“This is crazy. You’re a crazy, stupid Star. Not possible. I’m a man. I was never in that room. You’re playing mind games with me.”
The Star shimmered and spat light beams across the room. “Your dead Michael, you were murdered when you were six and you have been dead for more than a century. Let me out of this cage and I will take you to another place where you can be happy and forget all the dreams and nightmares.”
“No … I want you to take me to the Sandman. I need to see that boy.”
“Very well.” Replied the Star. “Let’s go now.”
I opened the door to the birdcage. The Star hovered, then passed through the opening. Here it floated before my eyes and for a moment time-passed without noticing. Then we were flying into a parallel universe and it wasn’t long before we were in the room with the dirty mattress, bloody walls and closed door.
Everything I saw was exactly as I had seen it in the dream, except ... The boy on the dirty mattress was dead. He had been dead for some time. The dark man had cut his throat, leaving rats to trouble wounds, face and ears. Michael Keane’s bloated rotting body; devoured long ago by vermin and maggots, left only pale-yellow bones, shredded fabric and dried skin. The body had stayed undiscovered for twelve weeks and when the door blew open, sending thousands of flies into a frenzy, it was the police standing on the threshold. “Oh my God.” Said, one of the officers.
Scenes cloaked in a dim white haze left me viewing the horrible unfolding discovery of my body, while refusing to believe any of it was true. When I approached the police and asked for answers, they couldn’t see, nor hear me.
Turning to the Star, I growled. “You Liar. You’ve done something to my head. This isn’t me. I’m still dreaming. It’s all a terrible nightmare.”
The Star shimmered and replied. “You keep saying that and we have been through this hundreds of times.”
“I’m a man. Look at me… I have a life.”
The Star replied. “The life you have created is your unwillingness to remember what happened to you. You were murdered one hundred and ten years ago. So why don’t you come with me and allow me to take you faraway from this place. I’ll take you somewhere where you will be truly happy.”
“No! Your manipulating me, you little bastard. I know it. I’m not dead. You did this. You’re an evil alien and want to trap me in some alternative existence. Your playing tricks in my mind just so you can be free. I won’t let you go. Not now or ever.” Snatching the Star in midair. I shoved it in my pocket.
* * *
Sitting on the porch felt like ages, and at the same time, only a moment. Strangely, I couldn’t remember how I came to be here staring at the vast fields of green. The house seemed familiar. It was the mirror image of the house I’d always dreamed of owning. But I couldn’t remember how it was that I came to be here. In fact, I couldn’t remember much of anything. This didn’t bother me as my gaze shifted to the universe above. And while viewing this spectacular scene; my eyes caught a falling Star.
HILL 60 ROAD
C S Caspar
Copyright © 2019 Catherine Stepancic Caspar
Disclaimer: The characters and events in this story are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
One Friday night in 1997 Dan Bradley finished his last shift as chief slaughterman at the Sandford Abattoir. He drove home. Had a shower. Changed into black clothes. Combed his short dark hair. Picked up his black kill bag and walked out of his unassuming middle-class suburban house.
Before dawn the next morning, steel workers at the Coppermine Foundry found Dan’s abandoned white pickup truck in the parking lot, still idling. The lights were on and the driver’s door open.
On Monday morning Mrs. Jane Clarke called the police and reported her daughter missing. Amanda had not appeared at school and Jane hadn’t heard from her daughter since Friday afternoon. In that last conversation. Amanda had told her mother she was going out clubbing with some friends. She ended the conversation with... “I love you.”
Half an hour after Jane’s call, two police officers knocked on her door.
Amanda Clarke was a fit and pretty-blond with large oval blue eyes. She was in her final year at University. The chosen vocation was forensic anthropology. Her dreams; to join the FBI. Amanda kept her body in shape and visited the gym five days a week. Two years ago, she made black belt in Karate. Amanda was working hard towards her goal and had always been a straight-A student. However, confidence and preparation had not considered the imminent meeting with Dan Bradley’s taser.
Part One
Dan didn’t start life in a broken home, nor did he have a drunken father who beat him regularly. His mother wasn’t a domineering troll that controlled his every thought. His childhood was a happy one. An only child with normal working-class parents. Life had been fun. He had many school friends and summer holidays were regular gatherings at back yard BBQ’s. Dan never had a pet. Even though he’d begged and begged his parents for a puppy.
Until he was fifteen, and before the family moved states. Dan Bradley had been a normal well-adjusted teenager.
Dan’s father was a town planner, and when they offered him a transfer to a new a position in Devon. He jumped at the opportunity. Both Dan’s mother and father were excited about the change in events. However, Dan wasn’t. Not only because he was forced to leave his friends and the school he liked. But because Dan had a deep gut reaction, and it happened in the exact moment he’d been told they were moving. A foreboding of something coming … something imminent, dark and wicked. But he was just the kid. His parents paid the bills. “Sorry son.” His father said, when Dan complained. “We’re moving and that’s final.”
Two days after arriving at Hill 60 Road. Dan’s parents disappeared. He searched. He did. But it wasn’t until the next night that Dan found his parents corpses. Their bodies all bloodied and dismembered. Slimy fluid painted the walls and floor; the windows and blinds. Leaving corpus all over the bedroom.
Whom-ever had killed them. Had taken a considerable amount of time, because their teeth had been removed and arranged on display next to two severed noses; the pliers used, and a bloody gray hack-saw. On the mirror above the dresser. The murderer had soaked a finger in blood and drawn a smiley face.
When the police arrived. They found nothing… no evidence of a crime. The bedroom was tidy and appeared normal. Nothing was amiss. They didn’t see what Dan saw; the blood and guts of his dismembered and murdered parents. This strange fact confused him. And as Dan told his story over and over. The police didn’t believe him.
And who would? Because by now. Dan Bradley wasn’t a normal well-adjusted teenager. He had lost his mind.
What happened to Dan at Hill 60 road? What catalyst changed this perfectly normal boy into a schizo? How did his parents’ lives’ end in murder? And who did it? No evidence was found to incriminate. And even with the lack of bodies. The police found no blood spatter on his clothes or shoes. No motive and no evidence that a crime had been committed. The police couldn’t charge him on unsubstantiated claims, nor the fact that he was crazy. And crazy doesn’t necessarily prove murder.
Dan was a minor and the attending shrinks held to their analysis… Dan… now without parents, wasn’t mentally fit to be placed in a foster home. Instead, they sent him to a sanitorium.
Dan Bradley was forgotten. His parents were forgotten. And the case went stone cold.
Part Two
As this unbelievable story begins to uncover its mysteries, you will find, Hill 60 Road had a history. And as haunting's go. It was ancient and darker than hell.
It wasn’t something in the house that haunted it… not some evil demon that possessed it… not some dead and cursed predecessor that won’t let it go. The house itself was evil. A sinister and obsessed house. Prehistoric and weird, with a terrifying past … its unexpected arrival in an ordinary forest tells a strange story.
It all started long before Dan Bradley had been released from the sanitarium when he was twenty-five.
***
Seventy-five years ago, the house just appeared. No one ever built it. No records showed who may have owned it. The land had never been sold, and it wasn’t part of some development.
The house had arrived. By itself, and out of nowhere. Setting its foundations on crown-land; inside Dartmoor’s Heritage listed forest. Ten years passed while Devon County Council exhausted all avenues and debates about how, or who built that house in the forest. And when the police couldn’t help. No one to blame, and no one to charge. The Council decided to tear it down.
That all happened about sixty-eight years ago. And sixty-eight years, isn’t a long time to forget what happened to those men. The ones that had been there. The ones that had used hammer and axes. And even though, by dusk on that fateful day; when the house was destroyed and the land clear. When next morning dawned to blue skies and cool winds. The house was right back where it had been the day before. Just as shiny and new, as if nothing had happened.
In four months, all the work-men vanished. As time wore on, and the authorities could find no trace of the men, they classified their absence; as presumed dead. They were good men. Men that had happy families and steady jobs. And because the disappearances were linked to the demolition. No one ever tried to destroy that house again. Council abandoned it and no one ever−lived there.
As the many years rolled by and for such an old house. Not one nail was rusted. Not a piece of paint missing or peeling. Not a spec of dust on the windows. And the surrounding garden always looked like bushes were pruned and lawns mowed. Nevertheless, a lot of other people went missing in that forest after that house appeared. A hell of a lot.
So, by now, you may be wondering. How did the Bradley family end up moving into that house? Well I’m going to tell you, but not right now. Now, I must tell you what happened in the hours before those workers at Coppermine Foundry found Dan Bradley’s abandoned white pickup truck.
Part Three
It was one in the morning when thirty-four-year-old Dan Bradley drove his pickup into the Coppermine car park. He didn’t turn the engine off because his mind was a twisted maze. Distorted thoughts wailed through his brains like rats, spinning round and round on a screeching wheel lost in time. He kept looking over his shoulder expecting to see some monstrous figure. Someone he felt was hunting him. He’d seen it before. Many times, before. A malignant corpse. A black Shadow. His shadow, the one that had crawled right out of his body when he was fifteen. It happened in that house. That evil fuckin` house.
Dan’s family came there because the other house Council had organized for the Bradley’s, was still under renovation. With no other options, the CEO offered the Bradley family the house in Dartmoor forest as a temporary arrangement. They didn’t tell the Bradley’s about the houses` dark history. Perhaps, because eight-five years had passed, with nothing untoward, or strange phenomenon taking place. It was assumed it would be safe for the family to stay . . . temporarily.
Dan remembered when he was fifteen, standing by the car looking toward the house. How he had begged his parents not to enter. But they wouldn’t listen, and the minute Dan had walked into that house. He had seen the shadows crawling along the walls and floor in every room. Shadows that were screaming into his mind trying to send warnings. How he saw that every wall, every door and every floor was made from human bones and skin. Bodies ancient and present, wreathed in tortured history; living in an agony that would never end. But his parents didn’t see it… they didn’t see anything but a house that was build of brick and mortar.
Dan squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t stand the visions that relentlessly, haunted him. Apparitions of an ancient curse that tore prehistoric claws into his brain. Soon his fingers were tearing into his hair. Not registering pain, he ripped strands and clumps. But when the frenzy passed, and he opened his eyes again. There she was … illumined by the headlights and standing before the bonnet as solid as a picture. The dead woman, he had just murdered. Her ghost rose before his eyes in flowing strands of illumined gray cloud. The once pretty-blond; her body… now a rotting murdered corpse bound inside the walls and mortar of Hill 60 road. Amanda pointed at him. Locked accusing vicious eyes on him … This had never happened before.
As his body rolled through a meat grinder. Dan screamed in disbelief; refusing to believe the vision before him. He thumped his palms on the steering wheel. “It isn’t real. It isn’t real. Get away from meee…” He shrieked. “Get out of here. Leave me alone.”
But the spectres wouldn’t let go, leaving Dans mind awash with confusion. He couldn’t understand what was happening. And as he turned, once again, to look behind him . . . the ghosts of all the pretty girls immured in Hill 60 Road, arose in hostile eerie shades descending on the vehicle.
Dan cried; louder this time. He threw open the driver’s door and ran into the dark. Leaving behind his bloodied black kill bag and enough evidence to convict him to the gallows.
However, the police where never going to find Dan Bradley, nor his body. They were not going to find Amanda’s corpse, or any of the other women Dan murdered. Because what the police didn’t know. What no one knew; was the dead women and those men who had torn the house down so many years ago, had merged into the cursed house and its foundations.
Part Four
Long ago. After the last ice age. Devon was one of the first places in England people settled. And it was in Dartmoor forest that the house on Hill 60 Road was created. This occurrence happened in an era where superstition ran rampant. When it was believed that the walls of any new building, be it castle, house or bridge. Could not stand unless a human victim, be it child or adult, was sealed alive into the foundations. Many cultures and countries practised this abhorrent act. And the story tells; people actually−sold their children so they could be built into foundations. So, while I write this tale, it is hard to believe; this practice continued right into the late 15th century. Anyone building a structure must offer ‘a meal for the dead.’ A living person interred in the walls was of utmost importance and the more significant the victim the better.
In 1309 one such happening occurred. However, the builder of this house on Hill 60 Road, inside the Dartmoor. Could not bring himself to immure a live human into its foundations. He instead, had another plan. And invited the local and powerful witch to cast a spell, ensuring the dead were appeased and his house would stand. This was but a ruse, for he had come to terms with a better idea. The man planned to steal her shadow. Convinced that a shadow is just as good as a living body. For the belief, back then, was…someone’s shadow is the mirror of their soul. Stealing a shadow would appease the deity and the ‘meal for the dead’ would be pacified.
While the witch was moving around the foundations, voicing all manner of incantations. Chants that assured the house would stand for one-hundred years. She did not notice when the man secretly measured her shadow. And it wasn’t until she returned to Devon that she noticed her shadow had vanished.
The man waited not a minute upon seeing the woman leave, when he quickly buried her shadows` measure under the foundation stone. Confidant that stealing her shadow instead of her life would sit well with his conscience. However, within a year the witch was dead. For without her shadow, the witch could not survive. Nevertheless, she knew what the man had done, and before she died, she cursed that house. For the rest of eternity, it would collect the shadows of all those who entered, including its builder and his family. She swore the house could never be destroyed by any means. And until her shadow was returned, she would not pass into the afterlife.
The house became the devil's bridge. All those that entered its walls would lose their shadow. As the witch had lost hers. The house would then bind their dead bodies and blood into the walls and foundations. Leaving shadows to wonder through its rooms and halls. For each one hundred years, the house would collect bodies and shadows, and then disappear for the next one hundred years. Only to reappear in another forest in the following cycle. Over the centuries the house had grown bigger and bigger. For each body interned into the walls and mortar added to its size.
***
In the dark, leaving his pickup idling and the contents exposed. Dan headed south towards the forest. Running from the murdered ghostly terrors that pursued him. Breathless and confused he arrived at the house on Hill 60 Road before dawn. It had now been ninety-nine years and ninety-nine days since the house first appeared in Dartmoor forest.
The front door was open, and without looking behind him, where hundreds of ghostly spirits stood pointing at the house. Dan quietly, walked inside.
The malevolent house on Hill 60 Road disappeared the next day. Leaving no trace of its former existence. Dan Bradley was never seen again, and all truth be told, no one cared. The murders and disappearances in Devon ceased without explanation.
One-hundred years later, in Rivington Wood, Lancashire, a house appeared. No one knew who put it there, and no records of who built it were discovered.
WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT
Copyright © Catherine Stepancic Caspar 2020
I bought that cursed house nestled in the backwoods, and admittedly without doing due diligence, but at the time it seemed ideal. The large suburban three-bedroom timber home, painted in my favorite color, lemon yellow, checked all the boxes. I had made my decision, and anyway, I had nowhere else to go.
A week after moving in I started my new job at the school. Teaching primary school was all I’d hoped for and was the first position I’d been offered after leaving college. The children were wonderful, and life seemed pretty normal.
Six months had passed, and I was dug-in like a tick on a dog and at this point in time, I can attest that nothing untoward or strange had happened. Not that I was expecting complications.
Therefore, what happened next was completely unforeseen. And it happened one bright Saturday morning after the seemingly, kindly neighbor Janice Brown arrived at my front door in a floral blue dress, homemade biscuits and a smile. Her cheerful urban manner and unguarded persistence proved she was eager for conversation.
I didn’t know it then, but my comfortable security was about to be shattered. Her shadow darkening my doorway was going to change everything.
As any good neighbor would do, I invited her in, and for the next hour, we drank coffee and made small talk. However, it wasn’t long before I noticed Janice was acting strange.
“Have you heard anything unusual? She asked, changing the subject to something more sinister. It was then I noticed her voice was lofty, yet at the same time, curious… “Perhaps, noises coming from the basement at night?” she eased cautiously in her seat and pushed her coffee cup to the center of the table.
Although there was nothing visually disturbing about Janice's sudden doubts about this woman flooded in. Despite what my innermost fears were screaming; I couldn’t ignore the chill creeping stealthily through the house. Nevertheless, her questions forced me to cast involuntary, probing glances around the room. Janice did the same, and a long intimidating silence filled the tense atmosphere.
Her nearness and odd behavior felt immediately tangible. Her aura changed and now felt dense and filled with shadow. The questions she’d asked had shifted the mood. Only an hour ago she had appeared normal. Was she touched in the head? The woman hadn’t just come over for an introductory visit. She wanted something.
There had been no indication that her recital was about to set the dark horror in motion. And even if I wanted her out of my house, she had set my curiosity towards a haunted path. Skeletons of past events were laid free to crawl and howl like lurking predators rising within every breath inhaled and exhaled.
The air in the room suddenly dropped ice-cold and an unpleasant odor filled the space. The sensation of something contagious struck me all at once. And more than anything, I wanted this woman to leave. There was something deviant about Janice. A frightful abnormality and I was certain she was a sick and twisted individual. ‘The woman is out of her own mind.’ But words did not honor me, and the sensation of self-control snapped like boots that crushed brushwood. However, one sane thought kept my mouth shut… She was playing me in a crafty, patient attempt to over-balance my strength and sanity.
By now my interest had become far-reaching tentacles that started searching this woman’s motivations. I decided to play along with her dark tricks and stay in control of the conversation. I asked my own questions. “Janice. What do you really want to say? You obviously came here to disclose something you know about this house.”
Janice looked away and then pushed her chair back from the table as if she wanted to create a greater distance between us. “Have you heard anything unusual at night?” she repeated, flippantly, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and even as she said it, her eyes closely explored mine as if expecting to find the answer she was looking for.
I waited before replying, allowing the brief battle of wills to continue. I then shook my head. “No. Nothing unusual.”
Janice gazed at me with wide wolves eyes. “Are you sure?” her tone was menacing.
“Yes. I’m sure.” I snapped, suspecting this strange woman had become a hideous predator. She was raving mad and I’d let her in.
Silently cursing my stupidity and in words coated in venom, I said. “What’s this all about Janice? Why are you asking me stupid questions?”
Janice looked around the room with an air of frightful significance, and when again, she turned to me her emerging defiance was tangible. “I’m not asking stupid questions.” This reply was mechanical and detached.
Then wide fitful eyes restlessly surfed the room scanning every doorway, wall and hall. She glanced behind, side to side and I studied her carefully. Her actions were weird, and I had the distinct impression she was monitoring whether someone in the walls was listening. A moment later she vigorously, almost unconsciously, started scratching her left hand with her right.
Janice moved her chair back into the table and leaned towards me, still scratching the top of her hand where she had torn the skin and it was bleeding. “I need to tell you something.” She whispered over narrow eyes.
A threatening rising panic demanded I appease her. I moved back on my chair and folded my arms, deciding to remain in an artificial position. “Please… do tell.” I said, sarcastically, but inner wisdom kept on screaming dire warnings. I had to get her out of my house, and as soon as possible.
Janice began… “The couple that owned this house before you, disappeared without a trace. They lived here for only eight months and then… poof, gone. Leaving behind their vehicle, their clothing and everything else. The police never found them. And well… since then. Everyone in town stays away from here. Word is going around about this house… it’s haunted.”
Janice shifted nervously in her chair. She threw furtive glances over her shoulder. Forcing me to do the same. However, she had opened a can of worms and I had more questions.
“Okay, so who were they? And what do you think happened to them?”
“Nathaniel and Mary Pearce,” That was their names, yes… yes… Nathaniel and Mary. Janice’s mood had shifted once again, her speech was guttural, and her words tortured. She stopped scratching the back of her hand and now moved to nervously scratch the back of her neck. “They came here from upstate a year ago and it wasn’t long before Mary and I were close. I liked Mary, she was a nurse and a pretty blond. Her husband Nathaniel was a doctor.” Janice paused then and an evil smirk crossed her face. “The perfect couple, don’t you think?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about but decided to say nothing. Nevertheless, my eyes couldn’t hide fascination. Even though, I doubted every word that came out of her sick mouth.
“It was Nathaniel that was transferred here from Texas, and well… because Mary was in the same industry, she wasn’t going to have problems getting a job, now was she? Janice said this last statement with sour venom and envy.
Janice leaned closer then whispered. Do you know what Mary told me? She told me they were going to start a family. A family? Why would they want to do that?” Janice rolled her eyes, licked her lips and blew air from her lungs. Both hands now scratched her neck and her head wobbled from side to side, but it wasn’t long before nervous eyes resumed scanning the room.
“Why do you keep doing that?” I asked.
“Doing what?” she replied and immediately stopped scratching or performing any other weird activities.
I decided to let the question go and she too ignored any further answer.
I found myself slipping into a most hideous relationship with this woman. It was apparent that Janice had an unnatural connection to the house. Like she knew it intimately, and when, once again, she started fidgeting, I let it go because there was no denying I was now trapped in this mystery, and I won’t refute the old warning… curiosity killed the cat.
“It was just six months after they arrived in this house when Mary changed. Six months, just like you.” Janice paused repeated the room scanning and scratching then said. “Mary became withdrawn and skittish. When, I asked her what was wrong? She told me that every night, both she and her husband heard ghoulish and persistent knocking rising from the basement.”
“Did they find out what was making the noises?” I asked, playing along.
“No. I don’t think so.” Janice replied. “However, Nathaniel did go into the basement, but he found nothing. Later he called Pest control; they also found nothing. Nat then called a builder to inspect the foundations. But even the builder gave the house the all-clear. However, after all these things… it didn’t stop the knocking.”
Janice’s demeanor became morbid. She started trembling. I watched as her body language revealed overwhelming guilt. Her mind seemed to be consuming some terrible horror. Her eyes widened as if she had seen someone in the hallway. “I shouldn’t be here.” Janice jumped from her seat sending the chair tumbling over. “Can we please go outside?” it was almost apathetic pleading.
I hadn’t the time to offer a response when we both heard knocking. It was a hollow echo that repeated through the rooms and undoubtedly coming from regions deep beneath the house. Janice paled and before I had time to react, her feet were moving, she started running for the front door, and was outside before I had time to realize the change in events.
“Wait!” I cried as I raced after her into the front yard, down the slate path to the front white picket gate. “Janice wait…” But I couldn’t speak with her again, she had vanished; down the street and inside her own house.
Standing on the footpath for a few moments revising the disjointed and incredible story Janice had told. I resolved that I was going to get to the bottom of this mystery.
When I’d purchased the house. The paperwork had offered no disclosure about its past history. Nor did anyone mention the disappearance of the former owners.
Doubt was becoming an infectious scraping through my mind. Even though, I assumed Janice was crazy. I’d decided to call the real estate agent. Determined to ask him some pertinent questions.
Turning away from the street. I re-entered my house intent on going for the phone. Either Janice was insane, or her story was true. I needed to know.
However, I never made that call because while closing the front door behind me. I heard knocking. Louder than when Janice was in the house, and it was coming from the basement. I needed to discover the nature and appearance of those impossible sounds.
Taking a torch from the kitchen cupboard then moving down the hall. I opened the basement door. Down the stone steps, I arrived on a dirt floor. Here while shifting the light from corner to corner, I waited. A few minutes passed, no sound. I turned off the torch and stood in the dark. Knock… Knock… Knock… I practically jumped out of my skin and immediately turned on the torch. With my heart pounding bongo’s while I looked around, I still couldn’t discern where those sounds were coming from. The light scanned the floor. Nothing but dirt… Knock… Knock… I heard it again. It was directly under my feet.
Running back up the stairs I took a heavy broom from the closet and then returned to the basement. Sweeping the dirt away, I revealed an unmistakable timber trap door. I had known nothing about this when I bought the house. And while sweeping more dirt from its surface. I discovered a large iron ring set on one edge, and it appeared someone had attached an old cast iron lock to seal it. There was no key.
“Hello… is anyone down there?” I called into the dark while hitting the flat of my hand on the timber. “I’m going to get you out. Just hang in there.”
Knock… Knock…Knock…
“I can hear you. I’ll be back in a moment. I have to go and get something to break the lock.”
Knock…Knock…
While running up the basement stairs and out to the garden shed to get a hammer. I wondered if Nathaniel and his wife Mary were somehow trapped underground. It didn’t occur to me that a year had passed, and even if they were down there. They would be long dead from starvation and thirst.
Five minutes later, I was back in the basement, hitting the lock with the hammer. It was old and rusted, but with constant battering, it broke. Lifting the cast iron ring. I opened the trap door. But I did not find the faces of those trapped below, all that appeared was infinite darkness. “Hello,” I called, and the eerie echo offered no answer.
Directing the torchlight into the opening, without considering the implications, and with Nathaniel and Mary in mind. I went down the stone stairs into the darkness. Once reaching the bottom, the torchlight opened a view into a long dark tunnel. The atmosphere smelled musty and rotten, and the unmistakable scent of decomposition penetrated my nose and mouth. Choked by the stench. I covered my face with the collar of my shirt, then continued down the tunnel. “Hello… Is anyone down here?” the muffled sound almost a whisper through the fabric.
Nothing. No response.
It seemed I had been traveling a long time in the tunnel before arriving at the dead and rotting corpses of two individuals. A terrifying image of two lovers lying in an embrace. Their bodies a melded sculpture of dead tissues and rotted garments. They were, without a doubt. Nathaniel and Mary Pearce.
Scanning the surrounding area with the torch, the light beams spotted frightful numbers of older skeletons. Their skins rotted long ago, leaving only stained bones to reveal their former lives. Skeletons of the discarded, unfound and forgotten. The entombment had erased their lives, and it was… as if they had never existed.
Leaving not a minute to contemplate how these corpses had come to this demise when I heard the trap door close sharply, followed by the sound of someone slipping a lock. I heard it distinctly as it clicked into place. Realization slapped my face with stupidity. Then my mind flashed visions of an anticlimax; a non-expected horror regarding my predicament. Knowing the implications, that I was now locked in this tunnel with no way out. I ran from the horrible scene back the way I’d come. But it was too late. When reaching the top of the stairs… and no matter how hard I pushed. The trap door would not open. I was caught like a mouse in a trap and no one knew I was down here. ‘Is this what happened to Nat and Mary? Did they come exploring and then get locked down here never to find an escape?’ The questions were plausible and at the same time terrifying.
Banging forever banging in complete hopelessness for someone to come open the door. All the while knowing this action was futile, but cold panic made me do it anyway. Time seemed unending and had taken a more sinister mantle.
Hideous thoughts came in waves of fear. Who had locked me down here?
The question was stupid; it could be none other than Janice. Janice the evil pretender. She had orchestrated this event and I swore if I ever escaped, I would strangle her with my own bare hands. Yet the nagging gut feeling kept haunting me. Janice would never set foot in my house again, not until the next unsuspecting person bought the house. The thought that even though the other teachers at the school will wonder what had happened to me they would never find the trap door and set me free before I starved and died like these other poor wretched souls. Soon, the reality of my monstrous situation throttled any efforts of reason. Disheartened, I turned away from the trap door… There had to be another way out. I began retracing my steps down the infinite dark tunnel, wondering how long the batteries would last in such a small torch. A rattled mind searched memory. When did I last change the batteries? But it didn’t matter. There was nothing I could do about it now. All that was left was to try and get control of my emotions and to steady the ever-growing panic that I may end up like Nathaniel and Mary Pearce, and the rest of those dead and unnamed victims.
Almost Immediately, it felt like hours I’d been walking through this hellish tunnel searching for an exit. Passing more and more skeletons of long-dead people. I had no idea where I was, or if the tunnel would ever end. Thirst and hunger made me tired. Each time another corpse came into view. I wondered if they’d felt what I was feeling now. Did they give up hope? Did their lights go out? What evil, had trapped us all down here and why?
The loathsome questions would never be answered, and this twisted tunnel of death filled with rotting yesterdays would inevitably choke me with nameless probability. I wanted to sit down. I was drained and scared. But inside, that little voice; the one who kept me going all my life, warned me… if you stop, you will die like all the others.
Time was immeasurable as I kept going, dragging sluggish feet. Losing count of minutes and unthinkable days I’d been trapped in inner earth beneath the surface of sunlight. Time, it seemed, had lost its value in the darkness and thirst was a living crawling sensation that threatened to drive me insane.
I was weakening and my body craved sleep. How long had I been down here? The question had no foundation and the tunnel was unrelenting, never-ending and the deeper I ventured the thinner the air. It was stifling, and I found it hard to breathe.
Listless steps moved me forward, then the torch flickered, and the light went out. I hit the torch time and gain hoping the light would shine once more but I knew deep down the batteries were dead. Standing in the blackness not moving forward nor backward the horror of my predicament burned inside my soul, sending terror through my bones while I waited, lost, undecided and afraid.
“Hello, my pretty.” Said a voice in the darkness, its foul echo filtering through the tunnel with a hideous and grotesque craving. Something solid, cold and wet touched my cheek and I started screaming.
* * * *
Janice smiled as she threw the key into the bottom kitchen drawer amongst the others. Her mind awash with memories of a tragic past. Where fragments of recollection tethered in appalling, grisly yesterdays. Her father, unkempt and deeply savage had found the tunnel under the foundations of Baker street. It was he, that built the trapdoor.
Janice was raised in that house, and after her father died, the bank had come to take it because she couldn’t pay. Janice had no mother. She’d lost her when she was ten, and it wasn’t from an illness or desertion. It was because her father had murdered her. Put her corpse in the tunnel with all the other pretty girls he’d found on the street jogging or at supermarket car parks.
Janice, a long-time servant to the newspaper cuttings; flipped the pages of her stash. Since she was a child, she’d glued all the articles of the women father stole into her diary. Now gloating over pictures and stories of all the missing girls. Stolen girls forever lost in a dreadful past. The obscure innocence, that father sealed in endless cruelty and darkness.
Grotesque and macabre experiences assailed Janice’s fragile mind, even as she remembered how much she loved her long-dead father, and how he had loved her more. It was he that had taught her exactly how to love. His touch a venom felt inside like fingers probing her womanhood. It was father, that touched her like no other, caressing currents that passed without regrets. Father taught her how to kill and it was she that had ultimately killed him.
She had taken the axe and fixed it in his skull then dragged his bloody body down into the basement and dumped it in the tunnel. Nevertheless, the damage had been done and even this vengeful act had not freed her from his calling, where ghostly fingers still grazed her skin forever touching and tormenting. Even now his craving for fresh skin and blood was all he wanted. So to appease him she had plotted and planned, a way to feed his endless desire.
Mandy was stupid just like Nat and Mary. Daddy had a new toy to play with and Janice was certain he would leave her dreams alone, at least, until next time.
Seated at her kitchen table the scrapbook open, she shuddered before reaching a hand between her legs and flesh tingled with fire and ice. The shockwave jolted nerves that reached out from her body leaving flowing distortions of her power and delivering sensations that made her feel alive. Sucking in her breath a cold croak sounded deep in her throat; it resonated through the empty room…“I have delivered another gift; Daddy please leave me alone.”
She closed the scrapbook, “It’s our house… Ours.
MALEVOLENCE
The world is dark and disturbing, and sanity is evil.
Copyright © Catherine Stepancic Caspar 2020
Long and senseless days lure him nearer to madness, and madness is an endless road; a hopeless existence, that leads him like a scuttling idiot ever closer to the edge of lunacy. Even sleep eludes him. For slumber creates visible and tangible creatures haloed in a thousand tormented faces; monstrous visions that crawl savagely inside his suffering mind in dreadful repetition. Panic boils in hollow gray eyes—eyes that are gloomy empty shadows. Eyes that cannot see consideration in truth. Drawn into blackness, vile voices conjure echo’s only found in memories. Howling voices that never find peace, nor rest.
Tonight has become another cruel agony where lurking predators haunt the realm of dreams. Stepping out of shadows is no place for a solitary human, a living skeleton who crawled out of a polluted womb. A great shudder, like a shockwave, runs through his scrambled childhood and even though he knows, these savage screams are born in barren and remote places; unburied in sacred ground. He also knows regrets have no emissary, no messenger, no exhortation to stand against the pain in his head.
Desolation is his own nemesis… this dead-end intention that brings unthinkable secrecy, where darkness calls for justice, and the voice of insanity is loud and menacing. Determination threatens his final act, a perverted obstinacy that only offers helplessness even as it steals breath. Life has strangled security and only a secret promise can bargain with fear, panic, loneliness, confusion and thus bring deliverance. And although the words are hissed inside his mind, his lucid understanding is an insult to insanity. Death in obscurity is a deliberate act and is justified premeditation.
Silence, empty silence… It was happening again… he’s alone and they’re coming… coming for him… He hears them… repetitious marching footsteps, faint then louder, coming, coming… uncontrollable terror assaults his senses and stricken with fear, he waits…
“Vengeance is mine, until the end of time,” the leprous voices scream; demonic sounds that cut through the icy cold fog in a devil's war chant. The cold gray mist descends, it's horror-filled with menace, and covers him in a blanket of panic. And while his grip on reality begins to fade. He watches as emerging terrors leach from the ghostly gray overlay. A thousand earthen ruins, crawling, tearing, scratching, squeezing sanity in bare and frozen claws.
Reason has all but gone as visions of hellish cattle caught in a bordered path, begin to rise in tortured shadows. Sounds of bellowed sorrow and utter fear echo through the atmosphere, and the smell of blood is thick in trembling flesh. The creatures walk in single file towards the hammer of death and the slaughter that follows. Still alive, hooks are driven into hocks; hoisted and while aware, but immobile; feverish and petrified eyes, watch death coming with knives as sharp as ice.
Butchery is a long shadow who’s whistling hiss sounds a peculiar ballad, this song of knife and stone grinding a primitive and unsanctified act. The conveyer moves slowly around the ceiling, dragging heavy beasts hanging on chains ever moving towards the cold steel that carves their throats. Blood squirts then gushes to the floor, and long shadow’s oblivion to the creature before him; begins a savage frenzy; cutting and cutting, carving, and slicing, bones and tendons, tails and testicles.
Seconds remain before life becomes fodder and the creature remembers the rain, the moon, and green meadows. Senses explode in tides of revelation as searing pain comes swiftly, but reality is only a moment before the mercy of death delivers peace.
Outside an eerie storm is looming, and the distant sound of thunder and lightning heightens behind the dark door. This door to the underworld is in his soul and the storm in his thoughts. As the vision passes, he almost tempts to look within; but he knows, to do so, will expose every unnamed demon in a red sea of hate and bitterness. ‘Experience is evidence,’ says the ugly voice of repetition. ‘Beware’ the words scorching every appalling echo inside his mind. ‘Don’t do it’ delivers more proof of an ancient warning. But he knows. He has always known. When venturing inward, his soul will surely see… Not cattle that walk the channel, but instead, the swollen shadows of ghostly humans; tortured naked specters. Silent, expecting, afraid, heads downcast in wretchedness, as they move along in single file. Sedately shuffling like phantasmic forms towards the gates of Hell.
The damned is aware, as is he, that an end by one’s own hand, leads to eternal suffering. Hell is unending punishments served in vengeance, and only reserved for souls that ruined their earthly existence by accepting a cowards defeat.
The world's beauty has now passed. Imprisoned by his own mind while expecting an experience he has yet to explore. And even as guilt threatens to warn away the possibility of escape. He will not be discouraged nor prevented from fulfilling his destiny. This has happened before. So many times, and in so many places. Determined to follow through, unless he forever remains a prisoner in this miserable torment of a baron and broken Earth.
The menacing footfalls come closer, lurking, chilling, grating entities of his own creation. He knows he cannot flee, for the darkness stroked inside the realms of mind gnaw like rotting phantoms of imagination. His visions are haunting; the unplayed pain found only in broken dreams, and misery in madness is darker than bleeding wraiths.
When the visions begin to flow like water, he smells the scent of roasting pig. “This is the last time,” he promises the empty room and his voice is unrecognizable. Cold fumbling fingers reach for the loaded shotgun laying on the kitchen table and he shivers as the moment approaches. Placing the butt of the gun on the floor he leans forward then raises the barrel to his chin.
Suddenly transfixed, his finger on the trigger, unable to believe his eyes, he meets, across the table, the distended hallucination of himself. A gruesome reflection. His sickly pale corpse hideously bloated; a hellish death mask; the savage remains of what is left of his head. Skin and bone and blood paint the walls and ceiling. The final visceral manifestation of his imminent future. Malignant laughter spills from the maggoty presence and the wicked sound grates like nails scratching inside his head. Self-devouring pain is intolerant and darker than regret. Darker than the storm when it delivers an attempt to capture his heartbeat. But he’s not human anymore. He’s only a spectator in a dreadful thriller. A festering anomaly full of inside stuff—he pulls the trigger.
In this nameless place, he walks at the back of the line, alone through the gallows of death. A phantasmic specter amid other grotesque spirits. Here, the smell of roasting pig intensifies, leaving a heavy vapor laden with visions of what will come. Marching footsteps; again, he hears them. However, they are not—not footsteps but the hammer behind the door, rising and falling and crushing and smashing in morbid vicious horror. Bloodcurdling screams, unrelenting and continuous, crack the atmosphere as he moves closer and closer to extermination. Hell's door is but three paces away.
Far underneath the torment beneath this world of terror and deceit. The dead man’s earthly body is sentenced to a heap of dust and ashes. A spiteful irony carved on the headstone intends to censure the deed.
Rest in Peace.
End