Box Set

Scary Stories:

Volume 3 & 4

Chamber Of Horror Series

By

Billy Wells

Scary Stories:

A Collection of Horror

Volume 3

Chamber Of Horror Series

By

Billy Wells

Scary Stories: A Collection of Horror

Volume 3

Chamber of Horror Series

Copyright © 2014 by Billy Wells

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to Matt Nichols, a fellow writer who tried to make me see the light on passive voice. Sometimes he succeeded. Thanks, Matt.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

SCARY STORIES-VOL.3

THE RECKONING

When two friends are trapped in a hole in the rocks by a grizzly bear, the devil offers to save one of them for a price.

ABSOLUTELY NO FISHING

Two friends from the poor side of town come to fish at Manchester Cove, a luxury community of estates located on a beautiful lake during the off season. They ignore the sign, “Absolutely No Fishing.”

NEVERMORE

A billionaire builds an island paradise for his family to live when the zombie apocalypse has wiped out most of humanity.

SOMETHING IN THE SKY

Strange things happen to two college students on lovers lane after a meteor cuts a path through a nearby cemetery.

YOU REMEMBER, I’ll FORGET

A serial killer who murdered thirteen children as a teenager is released after twenty years of rehab in a sanitarium.

THE ROCK

Two lives change forever when a young boy puts his best friend's eye out with a rock he meant to throw over his head.

THE RIPPER

Gang members who played a prank on an elderly man on Halloween are harassed by someone calling himself "The Ripper."

FEELINGS

A motorist seeks revenge on a TV news reporter whose ambition to be a star caused an accident that killed the man's wife.

POWDERPUFF

A couple with a Doberman seek refuge in a cabin on a desolate mountain top when zombies take over the city where they lived.

HOMICIDE MAINTENANCE

A detective goes into the homicide crime scene cleaning business when he learns about the obscene fees businesses pay for the service.

Scary Stories-Vol. 4

CRAWLSPACE

Two reporters interview a strange humpbacked man in a house where gruesome experiments were conducted by previous owners.

NO REST FOR THE DEAD

A gravedigger provides fresh cadavers for medical research and makes a killing.

JUMPER

A patrol officer discovers a lovesick young man on a bridge contemplating suicide.

THE ABHORRENT CLUB

A group of depraved multimillionaires sponsor a freak show for their annual event.

DEAD

A young man killed in an automobile accident ten years ago visits his parents.

VAMPIRE

After a woman and her son move to town, a serial killer begins a reign of terror.

BUG

A professor is propositioned by a student who offers him sex for an "A.”

STRANGER IN THE RAIN

Two strangers meet in the deserted pool area of a large resort hotel with a storm threatening.

CONVERTIBLE BANDITS

Two travelers take a tip to save time by taking a shortcut on a lonely road not on their map.

PANDORA’S BOX

A man learns the love of his life can only marry him if he promises never to open her black box.

THE MONSTER NEXT DOOR

An apartment dweller is convinced his next door neighbor is a monster.

THE WALL

A rich playboy discovers an island with an enormous wall, Japanese soldiers, and a village of pygmy cannibals.

THE GREAT SANDINI

A man hypnotized in a nightclub act becomes involved in a murder plot.

THE RECKONING

Claude Jarvis and Cory Phelps had been climbing at Seneca Rocks in the Appalachian Mountains most of the day. On the final descent on their way back to camp, Claude had cut his wrist on a sharp rock. The deep, nasty gash bled like a son of a bitch even after he wrapped it tightly with a pair of socks from his rucksack.

They were miles from the visitor’s center and the ranger station where they could have gotten first aid, but once the flow of blood had finally subsided, they decided to continue toward their camp. They hoped to be there well before dark.

Cory, who had been Claude’s best friend since the fifth grade and his roommate all four years in college, kept looking nervously at the bloody bandage and peered at the landscape with obvious trepidation as they trudged down the mountain. Finally, he stopped, lit a cigarette, and asked, “Has it stopped bleeding yet?”

“Almost, but it sure took a while. My socks are still wet with blood.”

“If it has stopped bleeding, maybe it’s time to get rid of the bandage.”

“We still have a few more crags to maneuver,” Claude explained. “I don't want it to get infected.”

“I know, but I’m afraid a bear might smell the blood and come after us.”

“It’s pretty much stopped, but it’s still bleeding some. What made you think of a bear all of a sudden?”

Cory flicked the ash off his cigarette. “The ranger at the station said a grizzly escaped into these mountains yesterday when the truck transporting it to a zoo overturned on a hairpin curve. He told me a grizzly can smell blood from a long way off and have been known to come after an injured person if they smell it. Didn’t you see the movie, The Edge with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin?”

“No, I missed it. What happened?”

“A black dude accidentally cut his hand with a knife and disregarded the warning about bears being drawn to blood. From out of nowhere, this huge monster of a grizzly came right into their camp and tore the dude apart with its massive jaw and claws.”

“No shit! And you think it could happen to us because I cut my wrist?”

“I don’t know, man. I'm just telling you to ditch those bloody bandages as soon as you can.”

Claude didn't have anything to replace the bandage, and his arm was black with dirt from holding onto the rock face and scrambling up and down in the crevices all day. He looked concerned, but ignoring Cory's warnings, he continued down the slope toward their camp.

It was late afternoon when they returned to their campsite and entered the tent. Although he hadn’t mentioned the bandage again, Claude could see the worry on Cory’s face. Consequently, he took a towel from his rucksack, spliced it into pieces, and replaced the bloody bandage.

Afterward, he placed the bloody socks in a plastic pouch and put it under his sleeping bag. Then, he strode off toward the cover of a clump of bushes with a roll of toilet paper in his hand. He saw Cory collecting kindling to make a fire to cook dinner.

When Claude emerged from the bushes, he saw an enormous bear barreling down the mountain path toward Cory, who was in the process of lighting a fire.

“Cory! Bear!” Claude shouted, and started running into the trees.

Cory turned and saw the awesome beast moving at breakneck speed toward him. He quickly joined Claude in a mad dash toward a stand of rocks.

Cory had been a member of the track team in high school and college and was in much better shape than Claude. He quickly increased the distance between him and the grizzly as Claude struggled up the slope panting for breath.

The speed of the enormous beast barreling across the rocky terrain was astounding. Claude knew he was in trouble as the bear continued to narrow the distance between them, and the incline became harder for him to negotiate.

Cory kept screaming for Claude to stop looking back and to keep running. At the top of the rise, Cory discovered an indention in the rock face big enough for them to climb into, but not big enough for the bear. He screamed for Claude to suck it up if he wanted to live. Claude veered toward Cory standing atop a huge boulder.

Claude’s legs were screaming with pain. He thought his lungs would burst as he climbed the last pile of rocks. He could almost feel the bear’s breath on the back of his neck.

The stench of dead fish and spoiled meat hung heavy on the wind. The roar of the beast’s bellowing screeches coursed through their ears like fingernails on a blackboard. Suddenly when all seemed lost and the distance too great for Claude to reach his friend atop the boulders, the bear squealed as a rock bounced off its enormous nose. The momentary interruption caused it to hesitate just long enough for Claude to crawl to the spot where Cory had hurled the stone.

They scrambled through the vertical crack in the wall as deep as they could and waited for the onslaught that was sure to come.

No sooner were they spread-eagled against the inner wall than a fistful of claws swiped the air only inches from their noses. They scrunched and strained to get as far away from the raging beast as they could. The enormous brown 1,200-pound Goliath rushed at the boulders again and again. With each teeth-rattling thrust, the claws seemed a little bit closer as the earth moved under their feet. The bear appeared to be ravenous or possibly rabid as it relentlessly tore at the gigantic boulders blocking its way from reaching them.

Finally, the bear sat on the ground and peered at them through the crack in the rocks. Its soulless eyes had a fire of feral fury neither of the young climbers had ever seen in an animal, even on TV. It seemed to be driven with a hell-bent determination to tear them limb from limb.

“Look at those eyes. It's like he’s boring a hole through me. Do you think he knows I threw the rock that bounced off his snout?” Cory asked, still visibly shaking from head to toe.

“Hell if I know. He’s got one thing on his mind. Chow. And we’re it. I was a goner, until you saved the day with that rock. You saved my life, Partner, that’s for sure.”

“What are friends for, Big Man?” Cory scanned the behemoth standing over ten feet tall before him and stammered, “This must be the grizzly. It looks twice as big as the bears I saw in the pictures at the station. Can you believe it? This monster traveled over fifteen hundred miles from the Rockies to find us on a mountain where we’ve never been before.”

“Forget what shitty luck we’re having. What are we going to do now?” Claude asked, his eyes bulging with unbridled terror.

“Hopefully, we can wait him out.”

“Do you think he'll just get up and go away?”

“Damned if I know. But one thing’s for certain, we can’t outrun him.”

“He looks lean, mean… and hungry. I don't think he's going to give up that easily.”

“Hey, Big Man, it's the only chance we have. If he doesn't give up, we’re fucked.”

Eight hours later, they were still standing against the rock face. The bear had dozed off a few times, but now he was ogling them like a juicy piece of meat, sitting about ten feet away.

Cory said, ”We're going to need a little shut eye ourselves. It’s hard to keep standing erect for so long. Do you see that elongated opening at the base of the wall?”

“Yeah, I see it, but it’s not very deep.”

“Maybe not, but I think there's room for one of us to crawl inside and take a load off. You go first, then you can stand watch while I take a little nap.”

Claude crawled into the place Cory had mentioned and was relieved to take a break from standing. The movement aroused the bear from his post. He moved closer to the crack and sniffed, but after looking and smelling for a time, he sat back down and seemed to doze off again.

As Claude lay on the ground, he tried to let the tension in the shoulders relax. Would either of them make it back alive? It was all his fault. The grizzly must have smelled the blood just like Cory had feared.

Suddenly Claude heard a voice in his head, “Claude?”

He didn't understand where the voice was coming from. Certainly there was only the two of them in the hole.

Claude heard the voice again, “Claude?”

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“I have many names. You can call me Bob,” the eerie voice said telepathically.

“Bob?” Claude said softly, not wanting Cory to think he was losing it. ”I hear you, but I can't see you. Where are you?”

“I'm inside your mind, Claude. Let's say I'm your guardian angel.”

“And your name is Bob?”

“Don't dwell on my name. It's not important. You’re in trouble, Claude. Some deep, deep shit. Are you ready to die?”

“Of course not,” he answered in his mind. “I don't want to die. I haven't lived yet. I haven't even had sex with a girl.”

As soon as he said this mentally, Claude couldn't believe he confessed such a thing to anyone, let alone his guardian angel.

“What would you give to have a second chance at life?”

“I just graduated from college, and I start my new job next week. I haven’t saved any money yet, and I have college loans to pay. So far my only employment has been working part time at McDonald's and delivering papers.”

“I'll take your word as payment for my services.”

“My word?” Claude said confused.

“That's all it takes.”

“To do what?”

“To give you another chance at life.”

“You mean you can get us out of this predicament?”

“No. I can only save one of you.”

“I don't understand. What about Cory? Without him, I’d already be dead. He just saved my life.”

“Forget everything but the sound of my voice, Claude. What would you give not to die here today? And believe me you will die today, if we can’t make a deal. And it won't be pleasant. I promise you. So… what would you give?”

“Anything. I guess.”

“Does that mean you will do anything I ask if I save you?”

Claude didn't like the scary emphasis of the words he was hearing in his head. Was this a dream? He didn't know. He’d never heard a voice in his head before. Somehow, the voice didn't seem to be what he imagined a guardian angel would sound like, if there were such a thing.

He hesitated and finally said, “Are you the devil?”

“Who I am is not important. All that is important is for you to simply promise me you will do anything I ask not to die here today. Do we have a deal?”

Claude had never believed in heaven, hell, God, the devil. He considered all of these things fantasies humans created to feel better, when a loved one dies and to make themselves believe they will live on after death. George Carlin had put it all in perspective in one of his routines on HBO when he said, “There's an old man with a long white beard in the sky who loves you.” Consequently, whatever this was in his head could only be a figment of his imagination. What difference would it make what he agreed to?

“Well?” asked the voice impatiently.

“Okay, Bob. We have a deal. Work your magic.”

Suddenly a vast, empty feeling enveloped Claude. A sense of dread so profound he couldn't get his mind around it. In the real world, he heard Cory whisper to him, “Claude, wake up. You won't believe this. The bear just got up and headed into the woods.”

“What?” Claude said dreamily.

“Let's wait here a little while longer. I don't know if bears are smart enough to decoy us into the open and then attack, but let's not take any chances.”

After a half an hour passed, Claude and Cory emerged from the hole in the rocks. They continued to watch the terrain warily to see if the grizzly would reappear knowing all the while if it did come for them, they would have no chance to outrun it back to the hole in the rocks.

When they finally arrived at their camp, they took down the tent, packed up everything inside, and scurried down the mountain as fast as they could.

When they reached Cory's Honda Accord, they piled inside and locked the door securely. They sat there for a few minutes and peered out at the wilderness with a new sense of what being alive really meant. Cory finally exhaled loudly, started the engine, and they drove away. As they headed toward home, Claude wondered if his guardian angel, the devil, or whoever had been a figment of his imagination or had he really saved them from the bear.

* * *

When they arrived in Charlottesville three hours later, Claude and Cory parted company for the last time.

* * *

The next morning Claude boarded a train departing for Washington, DC to start his new job as an apprentice with Apex Photographic Ltd. Cory drove his Honda to New York City and began his career as an architect with Poirot, Marlowe, and Holmes, a prestigious firm who specialized in designing tall buildings.

Claude and Cory never saw each other again. They never spoke on the phone or sent emails to one another after their near death experience in the mountains in 1988. Claude never understood why their brush with death had made them strangers, but that was the reality. He never blamed Cory for his lack of communication. He could’ve tried to reach Cory himself, but never did.

Claude married Lydia Hamilton, a meteorologist. They reared two children, and lived happily in Northern Virginia. Cory married the publisher of Celebrity Nights, a well-known gossip magazine in the Big Apple. They also had two children and lived happily in a luxury apartment on Park Avenue.

In 1993, Claude earned a prestigious appointment as one of the White House photographers under Bill Clinton and continued with each new president up to the current administration. In recent years, he had taken many photographs of President Obama, the first lady, and their children. He found his position rewarding, and he and Lydia enjoyed being social butterflies in the nation’s capital. They loved meeting all the celebrities and foreign dignitaries.

From time to time, Claude would see Cory's name in the Washington Post. Sometimes he saw his picture in a magazine with an article about an impressive building he had designed. But during all the years that followed, neither ever tried to get together for a reunion with their families.

* * *

Then one day, years later, Claude received an invitation for a twenty-fifth college reunion. He’d chosen not to attend any of the previous reunions, but this time, he thought it would be fun to see his old friends from UVA. The affair was to be held at a restaurant near the campus. By this time, Claude had completely lost track of Cory’s career and hadn’t seen anything written about him for over five years.

On the night of the event, Lydia, accompanied him to the reunion. During the festivities, Claude enjoyed rekindling old times with his classmates from the graduating class of 1988. Some, who had been fat, were now thin; others, who were thin, were fat. Some were bald, and some had gray or snow-white hair. Some wore expensive clothes; others dressed as if the time had not been as kind with their lives.

Claude was disappointed Cory had not chosen to attend the reunion. At least, he had assumed that until Horace Lindsey circulated a two-page handout of pictures of classmates, who had passed away since graduation.

When he saw Cory's picture on the first page, it saddened him to think they had never spoken after the horrific incident with the grizzly.

When Claude saw the date, 1988, under Cory's graduation picture, he assumed the person who had created the brochure had inadvertently typed the wrong year of his death. He turned to Horace Lindsey, who had lived in the room next to them in the dorm, and casually mentioned the oversight. Horace smiled cordially and replied, “No, Claude, I don't think this is wrong. Cory was killed by a grizzly that escaped when the truck transporting it to the Atlanta zoo overturned. Don’t you remember, he was on a camping trip in West Virginia with his roommate, Cl....”

Horace hesitated, when he suddenly realized Claude was Cory's roommate, and he was with him the day he died. He looked at him oddly and said, “I don't understand, Claude. Certainly you know better than anyone what happened to Cory that terrible day.”

“Horace. I don't know what you mean. A bear chased Cory and me and had us pinned in a hole for over eight hours. But luckily, it finally gave up on us and left. It was certainly a close call, but we came home unscathed. Cory became a famous architect. He designed several landmark buildings in Manhattan and Chicago with his prestigious firm.”

Horace was confused and turned to another classmate, Murphy Schwartz, “Hey, Murph, do you remember Cory Phelps, who was in our class?”

“Sure. I remember Corey. He was on the track team with me. Too bad about the way he had to go, having a runaway grizzly attack him a few months after we graduated.”

Murphy looked up, and when he saw Claude standing with his mouth agape, he realized immediately he had been with Cory when he died. He began to stammer an apology when Claude cut him off.

“Look, fellas.” Claude explained. “I don't know why you think Cory died the day we were attacked by the bear, but I assure you, he was alive no more than five years ago and became a famous architect.”

“The two of them looked at Claude suspiciously. Horace inched forward in an attempt to smell Claude’s breath and finally said, “I don't want to upset you, but I believe Margie has a news clipping of the obits of the members of our class who passed away. You might want to look at that. Maybe, it will clarify the date for you.”

Claude saw Margie seated at a table across the room. As he approached, he saw a three-ring binder in front of her. For some reason he had an eerie feeling when he said, “Margie, I understand you have the obits of the classmates who passed away so far.”

“Yes, I do. I have all of them in this binder.”

“Could I see it?”

“Surely.” She handed it to him.

Claude opened the binder and stared at a picture of his friend and roommate, Cory Phelps, and his obituary clipped from the original Charlottesville Dailey Progress on November 15, 1988. The obits were in chronological order, and Cory was the first person in the class who had died after graduation. Reading from the top, the article indicated a grizzly bear, that had escaped from an overturned transport truck near Seneca Rocks, WV in the Appalachian Mountains, had killed his friend during a camping trip.

Claude’s head started to spin, and he quickly took a nearby seat and pretended to read from the notebook.

After pulling himself together, he threaded his way back to his table, where his wife was conversing with the former president of his class, Harriet Long. Afterward Claude sat in a daze and tried to make sense of his confusion about what happened on that fateful day in 1988. He made small talk with some of his classmates until he and Lydia left the party at ten o’clock.

It wasn’t long before Lydia sensed something was wrong as they headed toward home in Fairfax, Va., which was three hours from Charlottesville.

“What's wrong, Darling? Did something upset you about the reunion?”

Without hesitation, he blurted, “I’m totally confused about what happened when Cory, my roommate at college, and I were trapped in a hole with a twelve hundred pound grizzly breathing down our necks.”

“What do you mean, Darling? Did you blackout or something?”

“No. I remember it like it happened yesterday. You don’t forget something like that. We were trapped in a hole for a long time, but the bear finally wandered off, and we lived to tell about it. Cory, who was my best friend ever since the fifth grade, became a world-renowned architect who designed some of the tallest buildings in the world. I have a clipping I saved from Time magazine at home in my file cabinet.”

The words excited him as soon as they rolled off his tongue. When he arrived home, he would find the clipping to prove to himself he was not insane. Certainly, he didn’t dream Cory had a life.

“So what did the other classmates say about your roommate?” Lydia asked innocently.

“Two classmates said he was killed by the bear that day and never lived to have the life I remember. Another classmate showed me the obituary from the local newspaper from 1988, which also gives the bear attack as the cause of death.”

“Wow. That is strange.” Lydia said, and thinking back, she looked at Claude quizzically for some time and continued, “You say your best friend’s name was Cory, and he was your roommate in college?”

“That’s right. Cory Phelps. We met in the fifth grade, and he was my roommate all four years at UVA.”

“I'm surprised. I don’t remember you ever mentioning him before. He wasn’t invited to our wedding. Do you have a picture of him?”

“Of course. We went everywhere together for years,” Claude answered defensively. Then, shaking his head in bewilderment about the absence of a wedding invitation, he couldn't remember a single picture he had of Cory.

This realization was mindboggling to him. “I'm sorry, Lydia, I have a migraine. My head is about to explode. This thing about the year Cory died has really creeped me out.”

“Do you want me to drive?”

“Maybe you'd better.”

Claude pulled to the shoulder of the road and traded seats with Lydia. She drove as he sat wrestling with the cloudy memories of the past.

Finally, they arrived at their two-story colonial. As soon as Claude entered the house, he headed to the den and opened the file cabinet next to his desk. He saw the tab marked “fourth tallest building in the world,” removed it, and opened the folder.

He couldn't believe his eyes when he saw the picture of a blonde and short stranger who looked nothing like his friend standing in front of the skyscraper. The caption read Cary Barnes, not Cory Phelps.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, he remembered the creepy voice in his head that he had not thought of since that day in 1988. Horrific images flashed in his memory from the dark past. He saw Cory smiling, and he heard his voice, “Don't worry, Big Man. We’ll make it home, I promise.”

Then, somewhere behind his eyes, he saw Cory on the ground just outside the hole in the rock face. He had a big bump on his head, and he was holding his right knee and glaring at him in disbelief. In his mind’s eye, Claude saw the bear bounding into the hole as he scurried away as fast as he could. He heard Cory’s gut wrenching scream and the sound of the grizzly ripping his friend apart. Sadly, he remembered never looking back.

Is this what really happened? Had he sacrificed Cory for his own life and concocted some kind of fantasy about what happened that day?

Lydia stood with her mouth agape, staring at the wild look on Claude’s face as his lip began to shudder uncontrollably. Spittle ran down his chin as he tore at his hair and beat his fist on the desktop.

“What's wrong, Darling. Settle down. You look like you're having some kind of breakdown.”

Claude threw the picture of the architect and the skyscraper on the desktop and stood up. He disappeared into the bedroom and when he returned, he looked at Lydia like someone he vaguely recognized but didn’t really know. He muttered, “I need air and time to think.”

“Please, Darling. Don't leave. Stay here with me. I'm afraid you might hurt yourself or someone else in the state you’re in.”

“I'm okay. I need some time alone. I'll be back soon.”

She tried to hold him, but he pushed her away and fled out the front door with something tucked inside his coat.

Claude returned to his Lexus and sped away into the black night. He kept driving and driving, watching the blur of the double solid lines passing relentlessly for miles and miles.

* * *

Three hours later, he saw the Appalachian Mountain range in the distance, a silhouette in the night sky, as he ascended the highway up a winding road of hairpin turns.

When he pulled into the parking lot, an eerie feeling of déjà vu sent shivers up his spine. He got out of the car and started up the path like it was yesterday towards the stand of boulders at the foot of the mountain where the bear had attacked them.

It was a tedious climb, particularly, with his street shoes, and he scraped his arms and legs several times on the jagged rocks. He cursed when he slipped and tore a big hole in the knee of the suit he’d worn to the reunion. But did it really matter? He probably wouldn’t be coming back down if Satan were waiting for him in the rocks.

As he approached the fateful spot where the bear had trapped them in the crevice, he felt an eerie wind whisper on the shorthairs of the back of his neck. It sounded like a thousand souls crying in the night. Standing atop one of the boulders, he saw the silhouette of the devil against the night sky. In the light of a full moon that hung among a blanket of stars, he saw a face with no features except for his piercing red eyes that glowed like slits of fire.

“What are you doing here, Claude?” Satan asked grimly.

Claude recognized the voice immediately, “My memory has always been crystal clear about what happened here twenty-five years ago. The bear trapped us in the hole, but finally gave up on us, and we returned home safely. The next day, Cory and I went our separate ways to start new jobs. We had successful careers, got married, raised a family, and lived happily ever after. The strange part is all my classmates say Cory died here twenty-five years ago and never had the life I thought he had.”

“Cory didn't want to make a deal like you did. I offered him the same chance I offered you. He was a fool and suffered the consequences. He wouldn't sacrifice you to the bear. It's a dog eat dog world, Claude. He was a loser and paid the ultimate price.”

“Are you saying he wouldn’t sacrifice me to the bear, but I sacrificed him?”

“I never said that. Why sweat the small stuff, Claude. You went on and had a wonderful life with a woman you loved and who loved you. She gave you beautiful children, who gave you grandchildren you love dearly. Am I right or am I right? Fuck, Cory. He’s not even a pile of bones now.”

“You miserable…fiend.”

“Claude. I have many names, but fiend is not one of them,” Satan said curtly.”

“You made me kill my best friend to save my own skin.”

“I never said that. Why punish yourself, Claude? You don’t know what part you played that day. You only know Cory was killed by the bear and didn’t become an architect like you thought. There’s no reason to feel guilty, he would have died anyway whether you sold your…I mean made the deal with me or not.”

Claude stood in the darkness with tears streaming down his face.

He looked up at Satan’s red glowing eyes and said, “Somehow I fell into your trap and let you deceive me about the deal I made with you. Somehow, you erased the guilt of my actions from my mind all my life. But several hours ago, I saw visions of what really happened that day.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that. I never thought you would. I must be slipping after thousands of years.”

“And somewhere down the road there’ll come a day of reckoning when you will ask me to do some diabolical act for you. Am I right or am I right?”

“Exactly,” Satan said with a chuckle. “And the day is finally imminent after all these years. In fact, I have a job for you next Tuesday.”

Claude thought for a moment and replied, “Next Tuesday, I'm scheduled to take photographs of President Obama and his cabinet for an article to appear in Newsweek the following month.”

“Correct, Claude! Your time of greatness is only three days away. You will be more famous than John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and all the other great assassins of all time. When you take the picture on Tuesday, the camera will explode and exterminate the entire US cabinet and send the United States government into complete chaos.”

“You must be crazy if you think I’d kill the President.”

“You must do my bidding, or else,” Satan shrieked.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You won’t believe what would have happened to your lovely wife if you had not married her.”

“You fiend.”

“Stop calling me that. Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Mammon, or The Prince of Darkness will do for right now, but not fiend. Anyhoo, Lydia didn't fare well with the ax murderer who swept her off her feet and then chopped them off. The end was quite grisly and excruciatingly painful.”

“Fiend.”

“Claude. You’re testing my patience. Where was I? Oh, yes. If you don't follow through, your children and your grandchildren were never born. Think of all the joy and happiness that will be swept away in the blink of an eye. Every good thing you ever did since 1988 will not happen, and many people will suffer and die needlessly. Who gives a flying fuck if a group of ass kissing politicians is blown to smithereens? Just like the lawyers at the bottom of the ocean with five hundred pounds of chains wrapped around their feet. It’s a good start. Would you rather see those imbeciles live or your own precious family? You had a wonderful life, Claude. Are you going to throw it all away?”

Claude pulled out the 38 special concealed in his coat pocket and fired five quick shots at the demon with red eyes. Satan stood with his mouthful of fangs agape as the bullets ricocheted off the rocks behind him. Claude put the gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger. He heard a click and the devil said, “Now Claude, it's not going to be that easy to welsh on our deal.”

Suddenly Claude and Cory were back in the hole with their backs to the wall, cringing in fear. The ten-foot monster swiped the air in front of their faces with its enormous claws.

Then the boulder that kept the beast from reaching Claude and Cory disappeared in a puff of smoke. The last thing they heard was a gale of raucous laughter filling their ears as the grizzly pounced on them with all its fury and began to maul, slash, and tear them to ribbons with toothy delight.

* * *

Twenty-five years later at the 50th reunion of the class of ‘88, only half of those who attended the 25th year reunion returned.

About halfway through the evening, the master of ceremonies played a disc on a large screen monitor of the class members who had passed away since graduation.

The first picture that appeared on the screen was of Cory Phelps. The caption underneath read November 15, 1988. Unlike before, the second picture was of Claude Jarvis. He had the same caption underneath his yearbook picture, November 15, 1988.

Horace Lindsey said to Murph Schwartz, “I remember those guys like it was yesterday. They loved life and their futures were bright. They had everything going for them. They could've written their own ticket and gone as far as they could dream. Can you believe the bad luck? It’s mind boggling to think a grizzly that was transported over fifteen hundred miles from its habitat snuffed out their lives only a few months after they graduated.”

“Horace, when you’re right, you’re right.”

ABSOLUTELY NO FISHING

As Henry and Dave approached the impressive community with fifteen mansions bordering an expansive lake, Henry’s face darkened when he saw the huge sign on the entry gate that read: PRIVATE PROPERTY- NO TRESPASSING- ABSOLUTELY NO FISHING WITHOUT SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES.

He looked at his long time buddy with the big tattoos on both biceps and the nose ring and said “Hey, man. We can't fish here. This is private property. These rich dudes have their own private docks, and they don’t want poor people like us smelling up the place.”

Dave scoffed and snapped a reply, "It's the off-season, Bro. Do you see anyone around? It's as cold as a witch’s tit this time of year. These are summer homes of the rich and famous.”

Henry peered into the distance in wonder at the monstrous structures, each over 10,000 square feet, some with four car garages. Shaking his head in disbelief, he said, if these are summer homes, what the fuck do their main homes look like?”

“I guess you've never been to Newport.”

“Newport?”

“Yeah. It's in Rhode Island. You can tour the summer homes of a bunch of rich dudes like the Vanderbilts that were built in the late 1800’s. There are some enormous mansions there that would make these rat traps look small.”

“Hey, Dave. We really should find another place to fish. This gate and the wall around the whole area means these people are serious about their privacy. The sign alone with the brick and glass enclosure must have cost a couple of grand to construct. I’ll bet if someone catches us inside the gate, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“Probably some rich lawyer came up with that “serious consequences” bullshit. Look. I’ve lived in this county for years, and I can guarantee no one lives in this community in December. It's too cold. They're just trying to scare us with this sign.”

Henry kicked at some expensive stones in front of the gate, and asked, “Have you ever come here to fish before?”

“No, I never did, but I don't know anything about fishing. I've never done it. You're the one who likes to fish. That's why I brought you here. This is a great place. You should see it in the summer. There are boats all over this lake. Every stretch of sand has a beautiful babe in a skimpy bikini. These guys like to party 24/7.”

“Have you taken a look in the mirror lately, Dave? We don’t fit in with this crowd.”

“You’re right. We’d stick out like a gorilla in a nudist colony. I wouldn’t think of trespassing then. We’d probably get our asses chewed up by a pack of Dobermans.”

“I think we should call it a bad idea and leave. I’ve never even trespassed on some shit kicker’s property at the trailer park before. That sign worries me.”

“Don't worry. Be happy. I'll take the responsibility.”

“So, if someone comes along, you’ll talk to them.”

“I’m not the least bit worried. Of course, I’ll tell them to go fuck themselves. What can they do to us anyway, but ask us to leave. Relax.”

After another five minutes of coaxing, Henry relented like he always did to Dave’s flamboyant ideas. So far, none of Dave’s insanity had killed him.

They found a tree that allowed them to scale the wall, and Henry handed their fishing poles and gear down to Dave, who puffed on a weed, looking like he owned the entire complex. They gathered their stuff and headed toward the entrance to the main dock. They saw another sign on a post that read: ABSOLUTELY NO FISHING.

“Hey, man,” Henry said nervously. “There it is again. Absolutely no fishing.”

Dave decided to lay it on the line. “Henry, without wheels this is the only place around here to fish without walking twenty miles to the other side of the lake. Do you feel like walking forty miles today?”

“No. I don't want to walk forty miles, but I don't want to get arrested or pay a big fine either. I don't need to fish that badly. Why don't we forget it and go to the movies?”

“No way,” Dave barked. “I didn't shell out the coin for this rod and reel to let it sit in the closet for the rest of my life. And, I don’t have enough money left for a movie, some popcorn, and a big drink. No one is here to bother us, I tell you. Stop worrying.”

Henry looked in all directions again, and just as before, he didn’t see anyone in sight. “Well, okay. I give up. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do, worrywart. Come on.”

They started walking down the long dock with piers leading off to the left and right about halfway down.

“Let's go to the very end,” Dave said. “The water is a lot deeper there. I hear the fish are bigger the further away from shore you go.”

“Cool,” Henry replied, shaking his head as he finally took notice of the true expanse of the community dock. “It must have cost a fortune to build this. Look how many pilings there are. There are beaches on the Jersey shore that don’t have a dock with piers this big.”

“Regis Manchester has a lot of moolah. He’s into all kinds of businesses, straight and crooked, I hear. Like I said, these are just the summer homes of the old man, his children, and their wives. This cove is named after him. Did you see the big sign out on the road?”

“You mean this is Manchester Cove?”

“The one and only.”

“And all these houses belong to his family and grandchildren?”

“That’s what I understand.” Dave pointed to several spots around the dock. “That’s the main house, and each one of those monster homes belongs to one of his children.”

“Goddamn. It’s obscene to be so rich,” Henry bellowed.

“When I was in Amway, they used to say, if you cut a pie of all the good things in life into five equal pieces, four pieces would go to the Manchesters, and one piece would go to all the poor dirt bags in this county like us.”

“What a crock of shit? Life is so unfair.”

“The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. It’s been that way since time and memorial.”

“What does time and memorial mean?” Henry asked, rolling the phrase over on his tongue.

“Hell if I know. I guess it means a long, fucking time.”

As they approached the end of the dock, they saw a large yacht moored at the edge of a pier jutting off to the right.

“Someone must be around,” Henry said, inspecting the fifty-foot monstrosity. “The owner of this expensive yacht wouldn't leave a boat like this here all winter unattended, would he?”

“It does seem odd. Let's take a look.”

“What!” Henry shouted. “Are you crazy?”

Dave climbed the ladder, boarded the boat, and started looking around like he owned the vessel. Henry reluctantly followed.

When they entered the main cabin, they saw an old photograph of four people on the wall. Next to it, they saw a line of newer family pictures going across the wall to the other side of the cabin.

“Wow. That's a strange looking group,” Henry remarked, looking at the old photo of a husband and wife and two children, a boy and a girl about ten years old.

“Hey. It doesn't take looks to be rich, it takes money,” Dave philosophized, blowing a big gob of spit on the floor.

“I know, but who would crawl into the sack with that ugly bitch. Look at the lips on her. She reminds me of a fish out of water. In fact, I’d think she was a fish if she replaced that gold ring in her lip with a fish hook.”

“Cut her some slack, Bro. Regis probably likes big lips like that. They probably can work magic between his legs on a warm summer night at the spa with a glass of champagne. Did you get a good look at her old man? I think he has bigger lips that she does.”

“Yeah, I agree. He didn't win any beauty contests, but my god; this woman must weigh over five hundred pounds. She looks more like a linebacker for the Chicago Bears. Can you imagine her as a bride with a long flowing gown? I think she has a better mustache than Regis.”

“Her family probably had a lot of money, and he overlooked her shortcomings.”

“But the two children look like they belong in a zoo. Look at the lips on the oldest one. Oooh, gross.”

“What do you expect the offspring of two ogres to look like? It’s all in the genes, Henry.”

“Look at these newer pictures. Some of these poses look a little more professional than the earlier pictures. This new breed looks a lot smaller in stature than their ancestors.”

“Believe me, Dave, there are things swimming in the tank over at Sea World that I would rather get in the sack with than these miserable, misshapen hulks of fat and cellulite.”

“You know what they say. Beauty is only skin deep. Ugly is to the bone.”

“Christ, these retards must have been humiliated and bullied every day of their lives when they went to school.”

“I doubt it. They probably had private tutors. Money has its privileges.”

They left the main cabin and started exploring more of the lower deck. When they opened the door to another cabin, they noticed an unpleasant fishy smell emanating from within.

”What’s that awful smell?” Henry asked, holding his nose. “It reminds me of the fish market they have in town on weekends in the summer, but this smells ten times worse. They have some pretty ugly seafood down there, and sometimes it smells so bad you wonder who could eat that shit.”

“Let's get out of here before I barf,” Dave choked.

When they stepped back on the pier, Henry said, “Dave, I hate to mention this, but I think I'm going to have to take a crap. The corned beef hash I had for breakfast didn't hit me right. Did you happen to see a rest room anywhere around here?”

“Why don't you use the facilities in the yacht? While you’re pitching a loaf, I’ll see if the fish are biting.”

“On the yacht?”

“Why not? The smell can't be any worse than what's already there.”

Henry pondered his suggestion and considering the alternatives, he decided Dave was right and went back into the main cabin.

Dave exited the boat and headed toward the end of the pier. In the distance, he saw a large fishing boat with several men dumping something from white containers into the lake. Whatever it was they were dumping was moving when it hit the water until the men clobbered it with their long heavy sticks. He hesitated to stare for fear it would cause trouble because one of the men was watching him through a pair of binoculars. Suddenly, the man shielded his eyes from the sun and waved. The other three men also looked in his direction and started waving, too.

Dave was mystified by such a welcoming response and returned their waves with one of his own. He assumed the men must have thought he was one of the Manchesters, which made no sense, since it was the middle of December and all the Manchesters were probably sipping Sherry in Palm Springs with the Vanderbilts. He couldn’t wait to tell Henry about the welcome he’d received from the friendly men on the fishing boat.

He sat down and removed a jar of worms he’d bought at the convenience store from his duffle bag. He made a sour face and placed one of the creepy crawlies on the hook of his rod and reel. He wiped his finger on his jeans and felt like throwing up, but he shrugged it off and cast the line into the water. He continued to see the men dumping more pails of something into the water, and then, he looked and they had sped off in the opposite direction.

After a time, Dave wondered what was keeping Henry in the can so long. From the corner of his eye, he saw movement below next to a piling. He wasn't worried about his legs dangling only three feet from the surface of the water, but the great white shark in Jaws did cross his mind. He'd heard there were big fish in this lake, but nothing he thought would be dangerous to humans. Moments later, he saw something flit by to the right and craned his neck lower to get a better look.

Henry had been delayed when he had to search for something to use for toilet paper. After he solved that problem, he didn't understand how to flush the gold-plated toilet. He finally found a button on the wall that did the job rather than a handle on the toilet like poor people like him would be expecting.

Finally, Henry left the cabin and bounded back onto the dock. Dave was right. His shit didn’t smell nearly as bad as the fishy stench already inside the cabin.

He looked for Dave, but he was nowhere in sight. As he approached the end of the pier, he saw his friend’s gear, but he didn't see him.

“Dave!” he called out, looking down at the expanse of the piers jutting in several directions, but he didn't receive an answer even after three tries.

“Dave, where are you?” he continued to shout. Still, there was no answer.

Henry walked to where Dave’s gear rested on the deck. He saw the butt of a cigarette still smoldering on the edge of the dock and smiled.

Dave couldn't have gone far. His cigarette was still burning an ugly black hole in the dock.

Henry noticed some debris floating in the water that had a reddish tint. Then, a bloody torso with one arm, one leg, and half of Dave’s’ skull surfaced and started bobbing up and down in the water like a human buoy.

Then, in the flash of an eye, Henry saw the hideous face of something resembling a lamprey with human facial features erupting from the cold, murky depths like a bat with its ass on fire.

He knew he should’ve flung himself backwards to avoid the savage jaws of the piranha-like teeth, but he was paralyzed with shock and wonder. The fish ghoul had the lips and the face of the eldest child in the old picture he'd seen on the wall in the cabin. But this time rather than the pursed, bloated lips sucking for air, he saw a mouthful of teeth as big as a frying pan suck his head into its mouth. He thrashed back and forth for a moment as the jaws sunk deeper into his temples, and one eye exploded from the pressure. Then the weight of the ravenous bloodsucker carried him down into a swirling maelstrom of frenzied feasting.

Henry felt the pain of a thousand bites ripping and tearing his flesh into shreds of human chum. The smaller Manchesters circled the bloody water, waiting for their turn.

NEVERMORE

Careful planning made Roland Barnes a billionaire.

Years before the zombie apocalypse had shifted into high gear, he’d bought an island in the Pacific, just in case.

He hired a construction company to build a magnificent home for his family surrounded by a moat stocked with piranhas. Despite its enormous size, the heavy terrain of the island camouflaged the mansion in case a ship with human marauders or rampaging zombies stumbled upon it. Even from the air, the roof looked like part of the dense jungle.

Roland had stocked his home with enough food and supplies to last three lifetimes. Before all the corporations failed, and the federal government collapsed, he also stocked his library with every video game and DVD that existed at the time.

Even after acquiring every entertainment product available, in a few years, Roland and his wife, Lucille, and their two children, Dean and Kelly, grew bored. With nothing other than the same media pastimes to occupy their minds, they adopted the lifestyle of the 1950s.

The family entertained each other by playing games they made up. They ate all their meals together and were as happy as they could be, under the circumstances.

Despite his great wealth, Roland worried that if one of them got sick or injured themselves during the course of their daily activities, he would be helpless to save them. Consequently, he continually reminded them to be extremely careful not to fall or cut themselves carelessly since it could be fatal.

Contact with the outside world ended completely not long after they had taken up residence on the island. The absence of TV when they first arrived was a devastating change for all of them, particularly Dean and Kelly, who were nine and eleven years old then. That gradually changed, and now TV didn't seem as important. At least, that's what they told themselves. Why obsess over something you could do nothing about. It was doubtful there would ever be TV programs again.

Without a miracle, life, as they'd known it, would never be the same again. Even if some scientist did find the cure for the disease that turned the dead into zombies seeking human flesh, how could they distribute it to the survivors? Every government worldwide had collapsed. It was a dog eat dog world now. Every man for himself. Survival of the fittest. Take whatever you can get. Kill or be killed.

Roland and his family had gotten out of the chaos just in time. They knew they could be the only ones on the planet who did not have to deal with the constant threat of unruly mobs and ravenous zombies.

* * *

Five years passed, and boredom increased. Roland was relieved no one had gotten sick or had a medical emergency. Also, no one needed to take prescription drugs except Kelly, who had a hormonal malady. Even before she came to the island, her gynecologist had prescribed birth control pills to provide relief for acne, water retention, and breast tenderness. Her friends chided her about being a nymphomaniac when one of them discovered the pills in her purse at an early age. Now, they were all dead, and probably zombies.

* * *

One summer day, Lucille discovered Roland in the game room. “Can you think of anything exciting we can do this afternoon to pass the time?” she asked, sipping a cold bottle of Perrier.

“Anything your heart desires, Darling. I’m easy,” Roland mused, rereading The Da Vinci Code for the fifth time.”

“Should we have sex on the veranda or on the picnic table in the park? You know what they say. Variety is the spice of life.”

“We can't do it outside. Dean and Kelly might see us…. But on second thought, I’ve never been an advocate of incest, but the way the world is now, it actually could have become politically correct in certain situations, and this would certainly be one of them.”

“Are you serious?” Lucille said, finding the suggestion disgusting.

“I know it sounds bizarre, but should Dean be a monk all his life, and Kelly, a nun? Why should our precious children practice abstinence and not enjoy sexual gratification with the opposite sex. Maybe they can find pleasure pleasuring themselves.”

“As long as you’re not suggesting we have sex with them. I guess you’ve probably noticed Kelly has grown a nice set of boobs since she rarely wears a bra.”

Roland rolled his eyes at this remark and snapped, “How could you say such a thing to me?”

“Sorry, that was a cheap shot,” she said sadly, “I’m just depressed over having nothing to do.”

“It’s not my fault. I’ve done all I can to make things as livable as possible.”

“I know, but I keep praying things will somehow return to normal. But you really don't think anything will ever change, do you?” Lucille said coldly. “You believe we're never going to see another human being. We're going to live and die right here. End of story.”

“I can't see any other scenario, Lucille. Do you?”

“What if by some miracle, the rest of the world is restored, and we never find out, and we fritter our lives away on this desolate rock.”

“Lucille, I don't call this enchanted paradise a desolate rock. Keep in mind, this fabulous mansion we have here surpasses anything we ever had in Palm Beach.”

“I'm just beating my gums to hear myself talk. Do you think the kids might really be having sex? They're always together, much of the time, without us.”

“If they are, more power to them. Kelly is taking the pill, and she has about 150 refills in our medical stockpile. So if Dean knocks her up, she won’t bear a deformed idiot we’ll have to see drooling at the dinner table due to her incest.”

“To be on the safe side, I think I should have a talk with her to be sure she’s protected. I’ll put out a feeler to see if I can tell if they really are having sex together.”

“Good,” Roland said. Now is it the picnic table or the veranda? All this sex talk has made me horny.”

* * *

Later that afternoon, Roland heard a sound that reminded him of a train whistle. He jumped up from his lounge chair, took the elevator to the highest part of the house, and did a three hundred and sixty degree once around with his binoculars. Sure enough, he saw a battleship passing in the distance, getting farther and farther away.

Through the binocs, he saw ghastly figures lumbering about mindlessly. Strewn about the deck, he saw heaps of half-eaten corpses, some still moving, and others, mercifully motionless.

He estimated a couple of hundred zombies were walking dead aboard the gargantuan vessel headed for oblivion somewhere ahead. He assumed they would drift endlessly across the globe until the hull collapsed from rust, and it finally sank into the murky depths.

He wondered if the zombies could still live underwater. They were dead now, the same as they would be then. Did they need oxygen to survive? He didn't know.

He saw several black birds landing on the pitiful carcasses, taking turns pecking at their flesh, and then flying away with pieces of flesh dangling from their beaks, again and again. He said a prayer for their eternally damned souls.

* * *

The next morning, Roland was in a dismal mood, thinking about the doomed ship. He was on his third perfect Manhattan when Lucille joined him in the game room.

“What's wrong, darling? Is the icemaker on the fritz again?”

“No, I saw a depressing sight earlier which darkened my mood.”

“Hopefully, it was Dean on top of Kelly, giving it to her as hard as he could.”

Roland took a sip of his Manhattan. “Actually, that wouldn't be so depressing. It really would be the best thing for both of them, considering the alternatives. It certainly would be something new to pass the time.”

“I had a talk with Kelly after we spoke. She wouldn’t admit to having sex, but she had a big smile on her face when I mentioned it. I think they’ve done it. I can’t believe how big her boobs have become.”

“Well, even infatuation and erotic love is temporary. I mean climb every mountain, swim every sea kind of love lasts no more than three years normally according to Penn and Teller on Showtime. Then, the honeymoon is over.”

“I was depressed yesterday, and now it seems you are. What depressing sight did you see?” Lucille asked, preparing a very dry martini at the wet bar.

“I saw a battleship with hundreds of zombies that only missed blundering head-on into our island by less than five hundred yards. I don't know what would've happened if it had run aground on the reef, and the zombies got to shore.”

“I thought you said the piranhas in the moat were an impenetrable line of defense.”

“I don't think our piranhas could devour that many of the walking dead. I saw over two-hundred, maybe more.”

“You should be happy, Roland. The ship didn't hit us, and we have years and years to grow old together, boring each other to tears with unimaginable sex.”

“It’s only eleven and you’re slurring your words. Better take it easy with the sauce.”

“Just trying to keep up with you. I can smell the whiskey from over here.”

“Tomorrow is my birthday,” Roland beamed and took another drink. “Do you know where the balloons and the noisemakers are?”

“Not really, but if I look about half a day in the underground warehouse, I believe I can find them. How old will you be?”

“Women remember these things better than men. But if you must know, I’ll be thirty-nine.”

“I thought you were thirty-nine last year.”

“I was and the year before as well. I will be thirty-nine forevermore, just like you. Where are the kids?”

Dean is watching Shawshank Redemption for the 12th time in his room, and I haven’t seen Kelly so far this morning. She felt a little under the weather last night. I felt her head, and she had a slight fever. I gave her some aspirin.”

Roland saw a raven fly over the porch. The shadow of its wings blocked the sun for a split second, and in that fleeting moment, he felt a chill creep up the back of his neck.

Roland rose from his lounge chair, knocking his cocktail off the table onto the floor. The crystal shattered into pieces on the ceramic. He felt an eerie sensation like someone had walked over his grave, and he wasn’t even dead.

“Darling, be careful. Don't cut your foot. I'll get the broom and the dustpan.”

He ignored Lucille's gibber and headed toward the stairs to the second floor.”

“Do you need to pee that badly?” she called to him.

“No.” he muttered. “I want to check on Kelly.”

“Why? She's all right. Don't wake her. A good night sleep will fix her right up.”

As Roland reached the top of the stairs, he saw another raven flit by the window. He noticed the elevator car, which he rarely used, was on this floor. He rushed into Kelly's room. The bed had been slept in, but she wasn’t there.

Through the window, he saw the sun going down into the ocean. The enormous ball of red fire was always one of the most beautiful sights he had ever seen, but today it seemed somehow foreboding. Like an omen, speaking to him about the end of days, and how precious every moment of life we have is a miracle.

He was mesmerized as the ball of fire changed colors and finally disappeared into the water. He stood in the dark. A falling star fell through the sky. He turned and headed toward Dean's room.

Roland heard the sound of the TV blaring at the end of the hall. He crept toward the open door like a man walking on pins and needles. He reached inside, switched on the light, and poked his head in. He didn’t see Morgan Freeman or Tim Robbins in Shawshank. Instead, he saw the monsters were winning on the TV screen. The bodies of the good guys were strewn among the rubble of carnage and destruction on the cyberspace landscape. Dean's joystick lay on the bed, unattended. He, too, was not in his room.

As Roland passed the elevator, he noticed it had returned to the first floor and he assumed Dean or Kelly, or both had taken it. Where were they when he went by before, just seconds ago? Had they been in his bedroom? Strange.

On his return to the stairs, Roland detoured into the master bedroom suite and looked around. Everything seemed in order. He went to the picture of the Eiffel Tower on the opposite wall, removed it, and entered the combination into his wall safe. Opening it, he withdrew a 38 special and stuck it in his belt. He closed the door and headed downstairs.

When he entered the game room, he saw Dean and Kelly seated on the sofa. They had their backs to him, and he couldn’t see their faces. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see them.

Then, he noticed a long splotch of blood on Kelly's blouse, and a massive chunk of flesh missing from the side of Dean's neck, which was spurting blood like a water fountain. He grabbed the whiskey bottle on the bar and took a giant swig. His hand shook violently when he tried to return the bottle to the bar top. It toppled off and crashed on the floor.

Dean and Kelly seemed to react instantly to the loud noise. They stood and moved awkwardly around the end of the sofa toward him. Lucille entered through one of the patio doors leading outside. Behind her, Roland saw dozens of crazed ravens diving in an out among the umbrellas. Others pecked ravenously at the plates of cheese and lunchmeat Lucille had placed on the picnic table for lunch. In the distance, the sky looked like a black cloud of wings swooping toward their paradise in the jungle.

As Kelly turned her face toward him, he saw the socket of her left eye was empty. Her mouth was wet with gore and slivers of Dean's neck. Her fingernails were bloody and broken. Her gnarled fingers looked like claws as she lumbered toward him, drooling, with insatiable hunger in her remaining bloodshot eye. Dean, a frenzied, undead ghoul, followed close behind her.

Lucille rushed around the other side of the sofa, sobbing uncontrollably.

Roland stood with his mouth agape, amazed that except for being quite inebriated, his wife looked the same as she did before he went upstairs. She was as radiant as ever in her skintight red dress with the overflowing deep cleavage.

Holding back the tears and steadying herself against the bar, she said, “Sorry, Roland. I didn’t know how to tell you before. I thought I’d let you find out for yourself, but they missed you when they took the elevator. A sick raven pecked out Kelly’s eye. She turned into a zombie during the night, and she must have bitten Dean in the neck. Cause now, he's a zombie, too.”

“Get away from them, Lucille, before they sink their teeth into you,” Roland shrieked, lifting the revolver from his belt.

Ignoring his pleas, she said, slurring her words, barely able to stand, "Put that gun away, Darling. I've got really bad news. Kelly forgot to take the pill, and she’s pregnant. Maybe we will have a drooling idiot from incest sitting across the dinner table with us after all.”

SOMETHING IN THE SKY

Chad and Elise reclined in the backseat of Chad's brand-new Camaro. Chad was hopeful this would be the night Elise would let him do more than just feel her up and tongue lash her for several hours. The high overlook was the most romantic place to make love in the county. Probably thousands of coeds had lost their virginity in this very spot. Condoms of all colors decorated the bushes along the parking lot. Chad hoped the moon on the lake would put Elise in the mood to let her guard down and hopefully her panties.

Since tonight was their fourth date, he thought it was time to do the wild thing. After all, on the last date, he had taken Elise to a fancy French restaurant, Le Pierre, which was far more expensive than a college student would normally spend. Certainly, after that extravagance, she must know it was time for some payback. Still, each time he pulled a zipper down, she pulled it right back up.

Suddenly, in the sky far across the other side of the lake a bright light appeared. The light was so dazzling Chad had seen it with his eyes shut in the throes of passion. It grew brighter and bigger as it rocketed toward them, moving much too fast for them to react or run for cover. Luckily, the object soared over the roof of the car and crashed into the trees behind them.

Chad lifted his lips from Melissa's left nipple and looked through the back glass. The meteor or whatever had cut a black hole through the underbrush, encircled by patches of fire. Elise’s head popped up, and she stared in wonder at the fiery circle of destruction and the steam rising far into the distance.

“What was that thing, Chad?” she asked, wide-eyed. “It came awfully close to crashing into your car. My ears are still ringing.”

“I think it was a meteor. You know, a falling star.”

“I thought they always burned up when they entered the Earth's atmosphere.”

“Wow! Elise was not only a fox; she must have a brain, as well. He quickly added, “Not always. I guess this one was too big to burn up completely.”

“You don't think this could be a monster from outer space, do you? It reminds me of the way The Blob started.”

“You mean that old flick from the 50s with Steve McQueen?”

“Who is Steve McQueen?”

“Never mind.”

“Do you think the woods will turn into a raging inferno?”

“Nothing’s happening so far. I don’t think the fire is getting any bigger. Do you?”

“Well, no, but I think this is a bad omen, and we should leave.”

“Leave? What do you mean, Sweet Thing? We were just getting started, and guess what I bought at the drugstore just before I picked you up.”

Elise frowned. “I told you, Chad, I'm all for us making each other feel good, but popping my cherry is something I’m saving for that very special person. Someone I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

“Aren't I special to you? This is our fourth date. You must like me some already, and with time, I'll grow on you more and more once I find out what turns you on. I thought we were making some pretty great music together. It sure sounded that way from all the moans of pleasure you made when I sucked your titties.”

“Please, Chad. Sex and love are two different things. You're very handsome, and you have killer abs. I can't deny you turn me on. And, riding around in your new car is really cool, but I'm saving my virginity for my knight in shining armor.”

“Feel this,” Chad beamed proudly, his huge biceps bulging from his muscle shirt. “I'm a dragon slayer first class.”

Suddenly they both heard a loud crash behind them like a tree had fallen not far away.

“What was that?” she gasped, straightening up and looking fearfully into the darkness.

“The meteor probably damaged a tree, and it fell over. Forget about it. Look how beautiful the moon is on the lake.” Chad snuggled closer to her and unloaded a long passionate kiss on her warm, sensuous lips. He heard her make a small cry of emotion deep in her throat, and he immediately began to fumble for the zipper on her jeans.

“Chad!” she barked. “Don't you feel the weird electricity in the air? It's all around us. Is getting into my pants so important you're blinded to the impending danger we may be facing. There could be little green men marching toward us right now. They could be surrounding the car if we’re not careful.”

Damn. He thought that last kiss had unlocked the door to her cold, cold heart.

They heard a strange, eerie screech of what sounded like a wild animal, but unlike anything either of them had ever heard before. Through the windshield, they saw a dense fog swallow the moon and then it started creeping across the water toward them.

“Chad, for gods sake, zip up your pants, and let's leave before something comes for us out of the fog.”

“Elise, my darling, how can you break my heart like this? Can't you see how madly in love I am with you?”

She couldn't believe the bullshit he was spouting. They barely knew each other. How could he have fallen madly in love with her after a few dates?

“Chad, I'm sorry if I’ve done something to lead you to believe this is anymore than a make out session. I like you, but that's it. I'm studying to be a neurosurgeon like my father. I plan to go to med school where I will hopefully meet someone with the same goals and aspirations as myself.”

“Is that why you don't love me? Because I’m not going to be a lawyer or a doctor like you. I’ll have you know my grades are good enough, but I'm on my way to the NFL after college. You know I'm leading the conference in touchdowns and yards passing.”

“Sorry. I really didn’t know. Football doesn’t interest me, but I wish you all the best in a professional sports career. I want my husband to be my soul mate and come home to me every night. I want him to make at least as much money as I do so we can raise a family and have a wonderful life making whoopee till death do us part.”

“It sounds pretty boring to me. I don't want to be tied down to a life where every day is like every other. Come with me on a magic carpet ride of thrills and chills and leaps of faith where we can go as far as we can dream and not be stuck in a life of mediocrity.”

“Chad, while you've been trying to get into my pants, the fog is so dense, we can't even see the lake anymore.”

They heard something metallic ding the back bumper, and they smelled something foul seeping into the car. The fog billowed around them, and suddenly visibility was almost non-existent.

“Did you hear that weird metallic sound on the back of the car?” Chad said mysteriously with a look of horror on his face. “And do you smell that awful alien stench in the air? I think your greatest fears have come true.”

“What do you think it is?”

“There’s no doubt, something from another planet has landed on Earth, and it’s coming to get us. We’re FUCKED!”

Elise screamed and looked around both sides of the car for something green and awful to emerge from the fog.

Then, Chad broke into a fit of uproarious laughter. Elise looked at him incredulously, amazed he didn't seem to be the slightest bit worried about the strange noise or the awful smell. He was even making a joke of it.

“Please, Chad. Stop trying to scare me. You know how spooky stuff bothers me. I told you I had nightmares after that horror movie the other night.”

“For God’s sake, Elise, you’re going to be brain surgeon, and you actually believe in monsters?”

Elise stewed for a moment over that remark and finally said, “I've been kind to you and wished you well on your career. I could’ve said your future is completely predicated on your ability to perform. If you blow out your knee or your arm, all your dreams are out the window, and you’ve got nothing to fall back on. I could have asked how long the average quarterback lasts in the UFL? That is, if you ever get there.”

“Wow. You know, Elise, when I saw your tight little ass swiveling across the campus, never in my wildest dreams, did I imagine what I hateful bitch you could be. As long as you had your lips locked on mine, the venom of your tongue couldn't poison the air inside my beautiful new Camaro. It's a good thing for both of us we had this little talk. I thought I was madly in love with you when I picked you up, but now, I consider you one of the most obnoxious cunts I've ever met. Rest assured from this point forward, I wouldn't give you the sweat off my balls.”

“Then get your meaty hands off me, and take me back to the dorm.”

“Look outside the window, bitch. We can't go anywhere until the fog lifts.”

They sat in silence enveloped by the fog for an interminable amount of time. Then Elise said, “Look, Chad. I'm sorry I said what I said; I'm sure you'll do fine in the SFL.”

“NFL, Elise.” He said still steaming.

“Sorry.”

They resumed sitting in silence for a time, still seething from the remarks both had made.

Elise finally said, “I need to pee really bad. I can’t wait any longer. I've got to go now, but I'm afraid to get out of the car.”

“Well, you can't piss all over my new seats for Christ sake. Get out and pull your panties down next to the car. I promise not to look.”

She saw him smile sheepishly, but she had no choice. She had to go. So, she unlocked the car door and stepped into the fog. Leaning against the side of the car, she lowered her panties and relieved herself.

Suddenly, Elise heard the sound of a crowd of people moaning all around her. She saw the tops of several half-eaten heads bobbing up and down in the swirling mist and scurried back inside the car.

“Chad! I think I saw zombies in the fog.”

“You think you saw what? I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing now, but I don't believe in any supernatural bullshit. So, don't waste your time telling me about zombies. There’s no such thing.”

Suddenly, A hideous face filled the driver’s side window behind Chad. The face of something still moving, but obviously dead. Its gray flesh was pocked, and several earthworms squirmed in the thing's matted disheveled hair. Its nose was a black hole in the middle of its face. One of its eyes hung on a shred of tissue from its cheek.

Elise screamed and couldn't stop screaming. Chad shook her, trying to make her stop. But she just kept screaming and staring at the hideous face lapping the window glass behind Chad with its black tongue.

Then another putrefied face with earthworms protruding from several orifices appeared in the passenger side window. Chad recoiled in horror, and finally realizing why Elise was screaming, he started screaming, too. As the deformed face sucked and slobbered across the window, a parade of the dead from a nearby cemetery shambled alongside both sides of the Camaro.

Suddenly, both car doors were wrenched opened, and fetid, bony hands gripped both of them and dragged them out of the car onto to the ground. A ghoulish, decomposed creature from the wormy depths ripped Elise’s clothes to shreds with superhuman strength while its graveyard friends held her down. Then, it crawled on top of her and began ravaging her. Before she passed out, she saw the salacious leers of the things waiting their turn. Not one of them looked like her knight in shining armor.

A group of nymphomaniac female corpses with ravenous sexual desires held Chad down on top of a marble slab and taught him a thing or two until he passed out from projectile vomiting.

* * *

The next day, the police and a vanload of county personnel came to investigate the aftermath of the meteor that had crashed near Crystal Lake the previous evening.

The sheriff and his deputy found thirty-one coffins exhumed and overturned along the black path of destruction the meteor had cut through the cemetery. They found the corpses scattered over the hillside and the parking lot bordering the lake. The ME, Andy Mayberry, and his staff had placed the remains in body bags and transported them to the morgue for further analysis.

Police officers also discovered two incoherent college students lying on the ground next to a brand new cherry red Camaro. Their tongues were shredded, and their vocal chords paralyzed from screaming, but their wallets identified them as Chad “Golden Arm” Magnum and Elise Buxom.

The initial newspaper article indicated that an undisclosed number of grave robbers had orchestrated the gang rape of both college students by male and female corpses strewn about the area. Every orifice of their bodies teemed with big, thick earthworms commonly found in graves. Both the star football player and his date were effectively brain dead. The trauma they had undergone had reduced them to slobbering, mindless human vegetables, who would be confined to an asylum for the rest of their lives.

The bizarre incident became the only thing county residents talked about as they waited for the DNA results to explain what had really happened to the two college students who’d become permanent residents of the Morningside Sanitarium.

Finally Mayberry received the DNA results and he finished what he knew would be the most controversial report he would ever file. He called Barney Walnut, a long time colleague and drinking buddy to review his findings prior to its release.

They met in the morgue during an autopsy Andy was conducting on a woman whose American Indian husband had skinned her alive. He turned off his microphone when Barney entered the room. Andy went to his desk, picked up the final report, and handed it to his colleague.

“Can we go into your office,” Barney asked, wincing from the skinless female torso on the metal table.

“If you can stand it, I need to finish this autopsy. I’m working on a rush for Lieutenant Thursday, who needs the info for a hearing tomorrow morning. I spent forever on the two college students who were gang raped after the meteor crashed, and I’m way behind.”

Barney started scanning the report, and after reading awhile, he said scratching his head. “You indicate the tomb raiders manually penetrated the woman with fifteen of the male corpses strewn about the graveyard. Andy, how can you even write something that absurd in the report. We both know a stiff, pardon the pun, can’t get it up after being dead for…ahhh…the freshest one had been in the ground more than five years.”

Mayberry put down his scalpel, just as the woman on the table expelled a pocket of gas noisily. Barney groaned as Andy replied, “There is certainly no precedent I can find in all of medical history for an erect penis after death, but the DNA from the decomposed penile flesh and rotten tissue I found of the corpses in Miss Buxom’s vagina proves it conclusively. There is no doubt they raped her. I even found bloodworm viscera inside her like I found inside of them. Moreover, what other conclusion is there. The grave robbers must have staged the rapes, since the rapists were dead.”

“What kind of sick perverts would think of doing something so depraved?” Barney’s gaze fell upon the raw exposed flesh of the skinned woman on the table, and he started to wretch. For a moment, Mayberry thought his colleague would upchuck all over his paper-strewn desk.

“For God’s sake,” Mayberry barked. “Go outside if you’re going to puke.”

Barney managed to control his involuntary inclination to throw up, and after a brief recovery, he continued, “And what about this…sperm… you found? Does that mean one of the tomb raiders raped the woman in addition to the fifteen corpses?”

“Can’t you read? It’s all in there. When I discovered the sperm, that's what I thought at first, but the DNA indicates the sperm belongs to the quarterback.“

“You really found traces of his DNA in nine female corpses scattered around the parking lot?”

“Absolutely. It was hard to tell his parents what I found, but that’s why I get paid the big bucks.”

Neither of them could muster a laugh from this remark as Barney continued, “You went out on another limb by suggesting the perpetrators must have mounted nine worm-infested dead women on top of Chad “Golden Arm” Magnum while they held him down.”

“That’s the only conclusion I can come to, no matter how bizarre it may sound. We found bruises and lacerations on his wrists and ankles. The evidence indicated the corpses themselves held him down. However, since no sane person would believe that, I stated the grave robbers manually orchestrated the women raping him.”

Why would these perverts go to all the trouble to have fifteen different male corpses gang rape the woman and nine different female corpses gang rape the man? And how could they do it without leaving behind a trace of their own DNA?”

“They had to be wearing HAZMAT suits or some kind of insulated uniforms not to leave DNA.”

“That’s crazy, Andy, and you know it.”

“What other conclusion is there other than there were no grave robbers, and the corpses themselves raped the students.”

“And you can’t put that in your report without being committed to the nut house,” Barney said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Mayberry shook his head. He’d been working around the clock for days and he smelled almost as bad as the skinned corpse in front of him. “I doubt we’ll ever find the supposed perverts who did this because in my opinion, they don’t exist. I believe the meteor brought the dead back to life, and instead of eating their victims like in the movies, they were hungry for sex with the first humans they came upon.”

“That really is a more plausible scenario that the bullshit you wrote, but you can’t suggest the dead came back alive.” Barney closed the file and placed it on the desk. “Well, I guess the sperm means the quarterback and the coed had sex before they were both reduced to vegetables in the final attack.”

Mayberry shook his head and replied, “I can't explain it, and I won't even try, but the evidence shows Chad “Golden Arm” Magnum as the last one to have sex with her.”

“Last? Come on, Andy. Someone must have contaminated the crime scene. I know Chad had a reputation as a ladies man, but how could he get it up with her after fifteen decomposing corpses had brutalized her before him, and he’d been gang raped by nine horny female corpses?”

“It couldn’t have been much fun because she was all ripped apart inside, but I checked it three times, Barney. You've heard of sloppy seconds and thirds. The quarterback was sloppy sixteen, and I do mean sloppy.”

Together, they puked all over the skinned corpse on the table, Mayberry’s final report, and his paper-strewn desk.

YOU REMEMBER, I’ll FORGET

Frank James couldn’t get his mind around not seeing bars on the windows when he emerged from a taxi in front of the house where he lived as a little boy. A tear rolled down his face as he saw the dilapidated jungle gym in the side yard. The seat on one of the swings had come loose and dangled on the ground.

He had done terrible things when he lived here. Gruesome acts so unspeakable for someone his age, his lawyer claimed he was not responsible for his actions due to a mental handicap. He wondered if his counsel had really believed he had a psychiatric illness when he entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and eventually won the case. Now after twenty years of rehabilitation at the Sanitarium in Rock Falls, he was found competent by a Psychiatric Security Review Board and released.

He remembered bits and pieces of memories when he was a little boy, playing with the children who lived close by. He remembered their names and faces like it were yesterday, along with glimpses of happy and not so happy times before they disappeared.

He remembered Barbara, who came over almost every day to play with him when they attended Woodlawn Elementary. They walked to school together. Then one Monday morning she didn’t meet him on the corner, and he never saw her again. He recalled the nice police officer, who’d asked him questions like the ones they ask on crime shows on TV. For weeks afterward, he saw posters of Barbara on telephone poles and trees. Under her picture, it read: “$10,000 Reward” in big letters for information leading to her recovery. No one ever collected the reward, because no one ever knew what happened to Barbara.

He remembered Skipper, who became his next best friend after Barbara. The two of them collected baseball cards. Skipper had a very hard-to-get card of Mickey Mantle that none of the other kids had. Was he mad when his valuable card turned up missing? Skipper had punched him in the stomach and accused him of taking it. That was the last time Skipper had come to play at his house. Like Barbara, he disappeared not long after, and no one in the neighborhood ever saw him again.

So many faces woven in memory from the dark past.

Larry Donahue had brought his arms up blocking him when they played touch football and almost caused Frank to bite off his tongue. Larry had thought this was hilarious.

John Hubble had hit him in the face with a dodge ball and broke his nose. He remembered Hubble laughing so hard he couldn't stop.

Cheryl Pearson loved to make paper dolls when she came over to play. She had a dollhouse they played with for hours. He’d shown her his penis, and she’d shown him her twat, but they never told anyone about it.

So many poignant memories with thirteen childhood friends, who disappeared because he killed them. Thankfully, the treatments he’d received from the doctors at Rock Falls had effectively erased all memory of the torture and cold-blooded death he’d inflicted upon them.

After the police arrested him, they said he’d told them the location of his secret cave where he’d committed the depraved acts and buried them.

During the extensive interrogations, Frank remembered spending countless hours with the detectives answering questions. He knew it had to be about what he’d done to the eight bodies they found in a deep hole inside the cave. He remembered the cave and could visualize it in his mind, but now, after the passage of time and the rehab, he was reluctant to dig deeper into the horror that lay dormant for so long.

He’d lived with his grandma in a split-level at the very end of the street that had a large patio on the lower level at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. He’d seen newspaper clippings about how he lured the last five children into the recreation room on the lower level and bludgeoned them into unconsciousness with a crowbar. After he tortured them until they died, he chopped them up, placed the pieces in heavy-duty garbage bags, and pitched them over the side of the patio retaining wall into the ocean.

The police had also mentioned that none of the other houses on his street had a view of the patio and the precipitous sheer cliff. It was the perfect place to commit murder. The waves crashing into the rocks did not allow the authorities to search along the coastline without sinking their boats on the reef.

Frank didn't know why the garbage bags never surfaced, but he was too young to worry about the technicalities. He only knew he’d never seen a trace of one on the beach.

Sometimes when the wind blew in from the ocean, he thought he detected a ripe stench. It may have come from some of the rotting corpses, but he never really knew what caused the smell. Maybe a bag or two may have broken open if they snagged on one of the jagged rocks, but his grandma never mentioned the stench and neither did he.

Frank couldn't believe he had murdered so many children over so many years and never been caught or even suspected. He guessed the authorities couldn’t imagine someone so young as a serial killer. Their search always included perverts who had a record of molesting children and those with a prison record.

The detectives said he probably could’ve killed a lot more children if he had stuck to throwing the bodies into the ocean quickly rather than prolonging their lives to torture them for several days. During the interrogations, Frank had indicated his grandmother was almost deaf, and since she was confined to a bed and her wheelchair on the first level, she never went downstairs during his murder spree. He also confessed he had removed the children’s tongues and gagged them with duct tape to be sure his granny couldn’t hear them screaming.

He didn’t remember it, but the detectives told him his last victim, Sue Rider, knew she was going to die if she didn't do something drastic. So, she broke her wrist to escape her bonds and fled through the sliding doors on to the patio while Frank was taking a nap. She ran to the next-door neighbors’ house, and they called the police.

He’d been sixteen when they’d taken him away. He would be thirty-seven next month. After a lobotomy, numerous shock treatments, and many strong narcotics, Frank had not displayed any homicidal tendencies for more than ten years, and he was ready to make a new start.

His doctors and the Board were convinced their rehabilitation program had cured Frank completely. He was no longer the stone cold killer he had once been. On the other hand, exhaustive tests indicated he was more on the timid side in terms of retribution, retaliation, and violence than the average person. He never exhibited a hint of rage no matter what disappointments came his way. In essence, he had become almost saint like.

His overpowering penchant to torture his victims for hours had been replaced with stamp collecting. Shit-kicking country music had replaced his love of listening to his victims scream for mercy that had once been music to his ears.

As he approached the steps leading to the porch of the house he’d inherited, he saw an enormous black spider crawling along the edge of the sidewalk. The arachnid paused when it detected his movement. Frank could've stepped on the spider, but he had no desire to hurt any living thing. His fetishes, his perversions, his bloodlust were all part of his forgotten past.

Frank was born again. He had found Jesus and would give a stranger the shirt off his back if he were in need. He couldn't wait to meet his neighbors to show them his kindness and generosity. It was late afternoon, and he had decided to start fresh the next morning. He unlocked the front door and stepped inside.

As he stood in the living room, a sense of déjà vu swept over him. He saw the Winter piano on the far wall. His grandmother had taught him how to play chopsticks and Clair de Lune on it so long ago.

The Lord must have been looking out for him because his grandma had died and left him her house only a month before his scheduled release from the mental institution.

The furniture in the living room, if he remembered correctly, remained in the exact location as the day the authorities had taken him away. They just weren't the same color as before.

He entered the kitchen, sat at the corner table, and ate the turkey sandwich he’d bought at the deli on the way home. Afterward, he went to bed. He wanted to get an early start in the morning.

As he mentally prepared to become a participating, upstanding member of the community, he felt a pang of unease as the shadow of the branches outside moved across the wall in front of his bed. He thought the boogeyman lived in his closet when he was eight years old. That's why he hadn't unpacked and hung his clothes on the hangers inside it earlier. He would check the closet tomorrow for the boogeyman after the sun came up.

As he lay there, trying to doze off, he thought about how he would need to find a job soon. The money his grandmother had left him wouldn't last long. He’d never had a job before he was committed. His reputation as a troublemaker had preceded him, and consequently, no one would hire him then.

After eating a bowl of cereal, he washed the dish, put it away, and walked into the front yard. The grass was long and needed cutting. One of the slats on the picket fence was missing. His grandma's house needed a makeover badly. The white siding wasn't white anymore. The gutters were rusty on the bottom, and the middle step leading to the porch was broken. The neighbors probably talked about how shabby his house was compared to the others on the street.

The only thing good about the property was the ocean view, but the other small houses on the street detracted from the house selling for any substantial sum in spite of the awesome view.

He opened his front gate, which squeaked loudly, and walked across the street to the house directly across from his.

He knocked on the door and waited. Finally, an elderly woman opened the door and squinted at him with a bewildered expression.

“If you're selling something, I don't want any.”

“No, ma'am. I'm your neighbor, Frank James, from across the street.”

“Neighbor? Mildred Pierce lived there by herself for years, but she died several weeks ago. Did you buy the house that quickly?”

“No. I'm her grandson. I inherited the house, and I moved in yesterday. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm looking forward to meeting all my neighbors, and I thought I'd start with you.”

She glared at him for a time, and then softened. “Well, I’m Mrs. Jenkins. Pleased to make your acquaintance. What’s your name again?”

“I’m Frank James.”

“You know, I've lived across the street here for twenty-five years, and I don't remember Mildred mentioning a grandson other than….”

Suddenly as if a light bulb went on in her head, the old woman shrieked as if she’d just scalded her hand with boiling water, "Grandson! You're not the grown up version of the little turd, who tortured and killed my precious Barbara, are you? Certainly you wouldn’t be stupid enough or brazen enough to darken my doorstep after what you did to her.”

Frank tried to remember what Barbara's mother looked like twenty-five years ago, and the image of an attractive woman with big blue eyes returned in his memory. He continued standing there, trying to put some words together, and finally muttered, “ I'm sorry, Mrs. Jenkins. It was a long time ago. I didn't remember you lived here.”

“I didn't live here then, asshole. I lived on Barbary Lane. You mean to tell me they let you out of the nuthouse after you tortured and killed thirteen children in this neighborhood. How could those morons sleep at night with someone like you walking the street without a strait jacket?”

“I was sick then, but I've been rehabilitated. Truly, I'm a God-fearing Christian. Since I found Jesus, my mission is to do what I can to help my fellow man. According to my Savior, my sins have been forgiven.”

“Well, believe me, I haven't forgiven you, and I'll bet I know twelve other parents in this neighborhood that haven't forgiven or forgotten what you did to their precious children, you depraved psychopath.”

She gathered as much spittle from her mouth as she could and spat an ugly green gob in his face that rolled off his nose onto his white shirt.

“Get off and stay off my property before I grab my shotgun and blow you to kingdom come. I'm sure a soulless killer like you will burn in hell for all eternity no matter what Jesus has told you.”

Frank shrunk timidly backward, shocked at his neighbor's reaction to his friendly visit.

He should have known it would be this way, but his rehabilitation had brainwashed him into believing that through Christ his sins had been forgiven. Everyone around him at the institution had preached he’d been sick and didn't know what he was doing when he did those horrible things. And now, after years of hypnosis, he didn’t remember the atrocities he’d committed. In the eyes of the law, he had paid for his crimes, and he was a free man. Unfortunately, even though the law, his fellow patients, and his doctors had forgiven him, it was painfully clear, Mrs. Jenkins didn’t believe in forgiveness. She remembered what he did to her daughter, Barbara, and thankfully, he did not.

Frank retreated to his house and sat on the sofa in the living room, thinking about the unpleasant confrontation he had just had with his irate neighbor. He knew now, he should not have come back to his old neighborhood. How could he have been so stupid? It was like walking into a lion’s den. He felt like he was in the middle of the jungle surrounded by ravenous wild animals that wanted to kill him.

He withdrew a business card from his wallet, picked up the phone, and was happy to hear a dial tone. He had rarely used a phone during his incarceration. Since he had no friends, he had no one to call. His grandmother was hard of hearing, and it was impossible to talk to her without screaming. Even then, she couldn't understand a thing he said when he called.

He punched in the number of his lawyer, who had filed the papers on the transfer of the deed for his grandma’s property. Schneider was also a realtor. He would have him list the house right away. The receptionist indicated her boss would not be in the office until late that afternoon.

Reluctantly, he stayed in the house and worried about what might happen at any moment. Somehow, in spite of the fear, he dozed off.

At seven thirty, the phone rang, and he answered it. Thank God, it was the lawyer finally returning his call. He quickly replied, "Mr. Schneider, I've decided that living in the old neighborhood was a very bad idea.”

“I'm not surprised, Frank. I didn't understand it when you told me you planned to return there.”

“Somehow during my rehabilitation, my doctors tweaked my memory of the past so completely, I don’t remember the enormity of what I did back then.

“Really? You don't remember anything?”

“I know what I did. Different people have told me, but I don't remember doing it.”

“So you want me to put the house up for sale?”

“ASAP, I don’t have a choice.” Frank said dejectedly.

“It's a bad time to sell a home, and your grandma's place needs a lot of work to make it salable.”

“Mr. Schneider, I don't have the cash to fix it up. Just let it go for whatever you can get. I don't even have enough for a cheap motel room. I have a bad feeling about staying here tonight, but I’ve got nowhere else to go. I want to leave as soon as possible. Is there any cash I can get my hands on now?”

“Not really. You'll probably get a small check in the mail in about ten days for about twenty-five hundred dollars.”

“Do what you can do to expedite it. Mr. Schneider, I hope you believe me. I know I did some horrible things in my youth, but that was over twenty years ago. I’m no longer that psychotic maniac. I'm a God-fearing Christian.”

“I'll do what I can, Frank.”

Schneider slammed the phone down on the receiver and said aloud to no one, “I hope they hang you from the highest tree, you sorry sack of shit.”

When Frank replaced the phone on its cradle, he felt a sense of impending danger surrounding the house like a black cloud. Only one neighbor knew he was there. Thank God, he hadn’t gone to any other houses. Maybe Mrs. Jenkins would not blab to everyone else he had moved in.

He saw his grandma’s ancient computer on a small desk in the corner and sat down in front of it. When he moved the mouse, the Microsoft Network slowly appeared on the monitor. Great. Her computer wasn't protected by a password. Frank had become fairly savvy on a computer at the sanitarium. Video games and surfing the web were his main pastimes the last ten years he was there.

He saw the mail icon on the dashboard and clicked on it. He discovered, scanning the entries, his grandma had received fifty-two messages since the day she was rushed to the hospital. He noticed she had received the last message about ten o’clock this morning. It was labeled “neighborhood watch alert!” He opened it.

To his horror, he found Jenkins had sent the message to about half the families in the community. The message read: Be aware! Frank James, the child torturer and killer of our thirteen children has been released from the sanitarium and is now living at 314 Memory Lane in the house formally occupied by his deceased grandmother, Mildred Pierce. He has expressed a desire to rekindle old times. Let’s meet at his house tonight at eight o’clock. Please bring something he’ll remember you by. Yours truly, Margaret Jenkins.

"Fuck!" he said for the first time in about ten years. Mrs. Jenkins was a member of the neighborhood watch program, and she’d blown the whistle on him. Thankfully, she must have inadvertently included his grandmother by mistake.

Suddenly a large stone crashed through the picture window across from where he sat. He heard loud, agitated voices shouting obscenities outside. The throng of people sounded like a lynch mob in an old western movie.

Frank scrambled for the phone, lifted the receiver, and punched in 9-1-1. The color drained from his face when he realized he no longer had a dial tone. Someone had cut the line.

“Come on out, Frank,” came a voice he thought belonged to Mrs. Jenkins. “You said you wanted to meet the neighbors. So, I sent emails to all the parents I know would want to see you. I even went door-to-door to tell the ones I didn’t hear from to be sure to attend. And I was right, everyone of them is dying to see you again.”

Frank heard the clang of what sounded like shovels and hoes striking in unison.

“Please, Mrs. Jenkins. I'm a changed man now. I wouldn't hurt a fly.”

Someone yelled, “Maybe not a fly, but what would you do to a six-year-old girl if you had her strapped to a table?”

“You've got it all wrong,” he screamed, “I've been saved. I asked Jesus to come into my heart and cleanse my soul.”

Another voice rang out, “We’re here to help Jesus cleanse your soul a little more. I think a hot bath of sulfuric acid should do the trick. Don’t you, Frank?”

He heard something heavy strike the front door and saw it explode into pieces into the living room. A throng of wild-eyed crazed maniacs, worse than anything he’d seen in the asylum, rushed in with an arsenal of tools, guns, and machinery. Strong hands grabbed him kicking and screaming, and dragged him out the back to the patio and strapped him to a large picnic table with lanterns hanging from ropes above it.

Frank knew the back of his house was and not visible from the street. It was the perfect place to torture and murder someone without being seen, and it had a magnificent view of the ocean.

Frank saw the bloodlust building in the frenzied eyes of the psychotic maniacs who only hours before had been sane law abiding citizens. He shrieked, “You’re making a terrible mistake.”

Mrs. Jenkins’ face appeared in the light. We want to give you a taste of your own medicine. Each parent of the poor children you tortured has brought the implement you used on them.”

“No,” Frank whimpered. “Please have mercy.”

“Don’t worry, Frank. We’re going to show you the same mercy you showed our children,” Mrs. Jenkins chuckled with delight.

Frank cringed as he looked around the table at the implements they’d brought with them. He saw a chainsaw, a nail gun, several drills, a hatchet, a claw hammer, a vice, a box of railroad spikes, and several butcher knives. He was in the hands of drooling psychopaths who had obviously lost every shred of sanity and compassion after hearing he had come to town.

The throng roared with approval when Mrs. Jenkins drew first blood. Then they squealed with joy with each spike she drove into Frank’s hands and feet on the picnic table.

Mrs. Flanagan was on deck with a drill.

Everyone had decided to save Mr. Jessup’s chain saw for last, which they had scheduled for day after tomorrow.

THE ROCK

Larry picked up a hefty rock about two inches in diameter from a flowerbed along the driveway. His best friend, Donnie, and three other close friends, Charlie, Ed, and Bruce were pitching a baseball around in the street in front of Donnie’s parents house.

Larry stood about twelve feet away. With a stern expression on his face, he called to Donnie, who had just caught the ball thrown by Bruce. Donnie turned toward him, smiled, and then frowned when he saw the serious look in Larry’s eyes. He also saw something in his hand, and asked, ”Whatcha got?”

Donnie had never seen the scary look on Larry’s face when he shouted loudly so everyone could hear, ”It's a rock, you sorry sack of shit, and I'm going to hit you with it.” All four of his friends looked at Larry as if he had grown three heads since they last saw him and stood with their mouths agape.

Larry wound up like his favorite pitcher, Mariano Rivera, and hurled the rock as hard as he could over his best friend’s head. Oops! At least that's what he meant to do, but to his horror, the missile crossed the short distance like a bullet and struck Donnie squarely in the right eye. He fell to the ground on one knee, holding his hand over his eye and screaming at the top of his lungs.

Right away Larry could see blood streaming down his friend’s face. He ran to him, totally disbelieving the insanity of what he’d just done.

Charlie rushed around in front of him and shouted, “Keep away from him, Larry. This is serious. Why the fuck did you want to hurt Donnie?”

Larry voice quavered with a combination of shock, fear, and guilt, “Fellas. It was supposed to be a joke. I would never intentionally hurt Donnie. You know that. He's my best friend, and he always has been.”

“You just told all of us you were going to hit him with the rock, and then you threw it as hard as you could. You didn’t give Donnie a chance to dodge it,” Bruce barked, seething with anger.

“I know it looks bad, but you’ve got to believe me,” Larry pleaded, tears streaming down his face. I was just fooling around. I meant to throw it over his head.”

“Gee, Larry. It didn't look that way to me. You looked totally serious. In fact, you looked as mad as a wet hornet when you threw it, and you called him a sorry sack of shit,” Ed replied hoarsely.

Suddenly, Donnie's mother and father emerged from their house and ran to their son, writhing on the ground, now with a circle of neighbors surrounding him.

Someone asked, “Did anyone call 9-1-1?”

“Yeah, I called them, and they're on their way,” Bob Ritter said.

Donnie’s mother, who Larry had known all his life, ran at him shaking her fist, her face red with anger, “ Why did you throw the rock at Donnie?”

Larry repeated, “I didn't mean to hit him. I meant to throw it over his head.”

“The other boys say you told everyone you were going to do it. Did you have an argument with him over something this morning?”

“No! We didn't argue. We hadn’t even spoken today when it happened.”

They heard a siren approaching. Then, a rescue squad vehicle pulled to the curb, followed by a police car. Two EMTs jumped out of the van and rushed to Donnie on the ground. Two police officers exited their cruiser and started asking questions.

Larry stood with his mouth agape, watching everyone glaring at him like he was Lee Harvey Oswald, and he’d just shot JFK.

The EMS people put Donnie on a stretcher, placed him inside their van, and drove off in the direction of the hospital. Several groups of neighbors remained scattered about the street, still glaring at Larry. Most of the adults had known him since he had learned to walk. Now, in their eyes, he had become a monster overnight. No one was buying his story.

A police officer Larry recognized, John Forbes, separated from one of the groups and approached him. “I understand you threw the rock that hit Donnie Flagg in the eye?”

“Yes,” he confessed and repeated the same script a third time, “I threw it, but I was just fooling around. I meant to throw it over his head, but I screwed up.”

“That’s odd. One of the neighbors said you were only ten feet away when you threw it. How could you misjudge a throw in that short distance?”

“It wasn’t that close, but even so, I can't believe I did it either. But I did.”

“The rescue squad tech said Donnie might lose his eye. It's severely damaged and was actually hanging outside the socket.”

“What?” Larry stammered. He had no idea Donnie’s injury was that serious. His friend had been holding his hand over it from the time the incident happened until he was taken to the hospital.

“If he loses the eye, you're going to be in even more hot water than you are now. Anyway, you're going to have to come with me to the station for more questioning.”

“I told you all I know already.”

“Maybe so; maybe not. We’ll see. Give me the names of your parents so I can contact them.”

Larry complied. The neighbors were still giving him looks that could kill as if they had never seen him before in their lives. He kept his eyes riveted to the ground as he followed the police officer to his cruiser and got in the backseat. He started to cry, thinking about Donnie with only one eye, and how the other kids would make life a living hell for him from now on.

When Larry arrived at the police station, Forbes escorted him to a conference room. After he sat there for a while, another officer entered the room, sat next to Forbes, and resumed the interrogation.

He continued to answer the same questions and gave them the same answers for what seemed an eternity. Finally, Larry’s parents entered the conference room, and the two officers left them alone.

“I can't believe you threw a rock at Donnie, and he may lose his eye. What would cause you to do such a terrible thing?” his dad said, blistering mad.

“Dad. I didn't do it on purpose. I meant to throw it over his head, and I screwed up.”

“You've been acting peculiar lately,” his mother said, biting her lip like she always did when she was upset. “Locking your door and staying up to the wee hours of the night. Is there something you're into we don't know about, Son?”

“Of course not, Mom.” He didn't want to tell her about the site he found on the net with the naked girls. He offered an explanation, that sounded pretty lame, “I like to play my music louder than you and dad like it so I shut the door.”

“That doesn't explain why you lock it.”

He didn't respond to that, since he didn’t want to say he was masturbating a lot when the door was closed.

“You're not into drugs are you?” his dad asked, pushing back the disheveled hair on his head nervously. “I hear there's a lot of that going on at your school these days.”

“No, Dad. You're not giving me enough allowance for that, I assure you.” Larry cringed, not knowing why he made such a stupid remark.

“What? You mean you're hanging around with hoodlums who use drugs.”

“Do you consider Donnie, Bruce, Ed and Charlie hoodlums? They're the only ones I run around with.”

“I doubt they’ll be hanging around with you any more after today.”

“Have you been smoking cigarettes?” his mom said, looking at him suspiciously. “Your T-shirt smelled smoky when I washed it the other day.”

“I made a mistake. I misjudged the distance I threw a rock. That's all. I haven't turned into a juvenile delinquent since I had breakfast this morning.”

His parents looked at each other with worry etched into their faces as they thought about what their son had said.

The next day, Larry found out Donnie had lost his eye, and his parents were suing his parents. If they lost the case, his mom and dad could lose everything.

From that day forward, all of Larry’s classmates he’d been close to at school avoided him. They walked the other way when they saw him coming.

Not long after, he failed a routine inspection of his locker. Someone had planted three marijuana cigarettes wrapped in a plastic bag in his tennis shoe. How they got the combination was a complete mystery.

He also noticed his teachers seemed more distant than before. The grades they gave him were much lower than they had been before the incident.

* * *

Years passed, and Larry was happy to leave the middle school. He hoped he would make new friends at Mount Vernon High.

Unfortunately, no matter what he did, he couldn’t make any new friends even at the new school. It seemed everyone knew he was the screwball who put his friend’s eye out.

On the day he became sixteen, one of his neighbor's dogs was found mutilated in the woods. He was the first teenager Officer Forbes questioned after it happened.

“Larry, someone we interviewed saw you on Easy Street the day Stinky disappeared.” Forbes said in an accusatory tone.

“Who told you that?” Larry barked defensively.

“I'm afraid the identity of the person is confidential. I’ll repeat the question. Were you on Easy Street last Thursday?

“I'm on Easy street every day. I have to go down it on my way to and from school just like every other teen who lives on Dipper Lane.”

“So you were on that street last Thursday?”

“I guess so.”

“Did you see Stinky?”

“I see him from time to time, but I don't keep track of exactly when. Who would?”

“When was the last time you remember seeing him?”

“Sometime last week, I think.”

“Did you notice anyone suspicious hanging around the neighborhood lately?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Do you know anyone who likes to hurt animals? Have you ever seen one of your friends mistreat an animal?”

“No. Never. I wouldn’t hang around with sick fucks who would do that.”

“Are you aware there's been a series of mutilations, all leading to the animal’s death over the last six months?”

“No. I've never heard anyone mention such a thing. I can't imagine any of my friends doing anything so terrible. Oh, pardon me. I forgot. I don't have any friends anymore. They all avoid me like the plague.”

“No one ever believed you didn't throw that rock at Donnie on purpose, did they?”

“I guess not, but they're wrong. I never meant to hurt him, and that’s the truth.”

“Someone said they saw Donnie throwing a burlap sack off the bridge into the river a few weeks ago. They heard cats screeching when the bag hit the water. Apparently, animals were trapped inside the bag and drowned. Do you think Donnie could do that?”

“Absolutely not.”

“When did you talk with him last?”

It saddened Larry to answer this question. “Not since the incident.”

“You haven't spoken with him for five years?”

“I guess it's been that long.”

“Are you aware Donnie has changed?”

“No. We never talk, and none of our old friends speak to me. What do you mean he's changed?”

“I’d better shut my trap,” Forbes said reconsidering his remark. “I thought you probably knew about it. You used to be his best friend.”

“That's right. Used to be.”

After the Lieutenant Forbes left, Larry called the only friend he’d made at the high school so far, Jason Kim, and asked about Donnie.

“You don't know?” Jason asked.

“Know what? Except for you, I'm an outcast. Nobody tells me anything.”

“After Donnie lost his eye, he's been in and out of trouble ever since. Have you seen him lately?”

“Now that you mention it, no. I never see him at school anymore.”

“That's because he dropped out over a year ago.”

“Dropped out? That's impossible, he was always at the top of the class.”

“Not anymore. The kids made fun of him after he got his false eye. He had trouble with it at first, and the kids crucified him. He's a Goth now, and he wears a black patch over his eye. He has tattoos and piercings all over his body. When he takes his shirt off at the town pool, he looks reptilian. All the tat choices he made alienated him further. He's a freak who does odd jobs if he can find anyone stupid enough to hire him.”

“I can't believe this. I thought throwing that rock ruined my life, not his. My parents lost their house, and now they live in a shitty apartment on the wrong side of town. We're not on speaking terms anymore. They believe I’m responsible for everything that happened. And the worst part is, they're right. Where did you say Donnie lives?”

“In Shantytown. I think he lives in an old derelict car close to the dump. You're not thinking of going for a visit are you?”

“It crossed my mind.”

Larry didn’t tell Jason, but if Donnie were a homeless person, he would have to put him on his list and waste him at some point. He hated smelly derelicts with a passion, and he was the Lord’s messenger to exterminate them.

“Don't do it,” Jason said. “He's not the person you used to know. He may try to hurt you, even kill you when he sees you. I hear he's one step out of the psych ward.”

“I don’t know if you heard about it, but Forbes told me someone saw him drowning a bag full of cats down by the river not long ago.”

“I wouldn't put it past him. He’s really fucked up.”

Larry remembered Donnie hated cats, and he did some demented things to them even before he’d thrown the rock. Larry knew about it, but didn’t squeal on him to Forbes.

“There are a lot of strange things going on around town the last year or so.”

“Like what?”

“Don't you read the paper?”

“Of course not, Jason. Nobody reads the paper anymore. They surf the net.”

“When you do that, you don't get any local news. And when you're out of touch, someone can come up behind you and bite you in the ass.”

“Hey, my ass is fine so far. What's been happening?”

“Several young women have been brutally murdered. More animals than usual have been mutilated and hung on fence posts. Quite a few children have gone missing lately, and the homeless population down on Carmine Street is half of what it used to be. There's no proof these events are linked, but Mutthead told me the Captain at the police station believes we have a serial killer on the loose in River City.”

“And you think Donnie might be the serial killer?”

“I don't know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He certainly would be a person of interest.”

“Maybe I'll stop and see him for old times sake,” Larry said. He would take his switchblade with him.

“What the fuck for? You wouldn't even recognize him if you saw him on the street. He looks more like a snake than a human being. His whole body is covered with black scale tattoos. He's not Donnie anymore; he’s Cobra man. He had plastic surgery on his tongue so it protrudes from his mouth like a serpent. His head is even shaped like a cobra. The only one who would hire him now after his last tattoo session is some freak show or a traveling carnival.”

“I wonder where he got the money to make himself look like a snake.” Larry said suspiciously. “Plastic surgery is very expensive.”

“That's a good question. Maybe he took it off the people he killed that disappeared. He hasn't had a job for years as far as I know, and you want to bury the hatchet and talk about old times?”

As Larry walked away to return to his shitty apartment to get his knife, he chuckled to himself that Jason had gotten that last statement half right but didn’t know it. Maybe he should bring his hatchet along just in case. What Jason never suspected and neither did Forbes was after he’d thrown the rock, he’d became an honest to god serial killer himself who preyed on prostitutes and homeless people.

When he was down and out without a friend in the world, he’d found Jesus. Now he was an avenging angel doing God’s work by ridding his perfect world of undesirables.

But, on the other hand, Donnie had gone completely wacko if he abducted children and mutilated animals. What a sick fuck. Larry felt the anger building as his desire to cleanse the neighborhood of the vermin like Donnie that walked the streets of carnal sin and sloth.

Children and animals. He obsessed. How low could his old buddy go? No one he knew could give a shit about whores and pathetic derelicts. But children and animals. That was really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

If the police couldn't take Donnie down, he would have to take the law into his own hands. He remembered how much the two of them enjoyed the Death Wish movies with Charles Bronson when they were best buddies. If everybody still loved vigilante justice as much as they did in the eighties, he might become the town hero if he wasted Donnie. His reputation could be restored entirely if he could only expose his secret identity. But he would get the needle if he did that so he couldn’t take a chance.

Maybe he should buy some fabric from Michaels and make a superhero uniform. What could he call himself? The Masked Avenger? The Pervert Eradicator? None of these titles had the right ring. They weren't good enough. Damn that Stan Lee. He'd scarfed up all the good superhero names. Curses. Larry couldn’t think of a single good one now, but he would eventually.

After all, it would be his duty as an upstanding American and local hero to stop that fucking Donnie Flag.

THE RIPPER

It was Halloween, and it was getting dark. Gomer was excited about seeing the trick-or-treaters. He’d bought four bags of candy for the children, who usually came with their parents just before dark. His house was the last one on the street, and he worried every year the parents may not come all the way to the end.

He was barely making it with his meager retirement checks, and his house looked more and more shabby as the years went by from lack of maintenance. Also, the two houses on both sides of the street closest to his house were vacant. Without the lights in these adjoining houses, his location on Shady Lane was eerily dark and foreboding. To make matters worse, the light on the pole across the street had burned out the day before, and no one had come to repair it.

Oh, well. What could he do but hope for the best?

After buying the candy, he’d spent his last dime on an antiquated, Ninja Turtle mask with a hole in the cheek. He preferred a scary mask but never got one because he feared it would frighten the children. He would have to go hungry for a few days because of the Halloween purchase, but it would be worth it if he could see the happy children in their gruesome little costumes.

He hoped the terrible Ramos brothers would not interfere with his plans for a wonderful evening. These hoodlums were much too old to beg for candy now, but they always seemed to come around to harass him at the worst times.

Gomer sat on his front porch, bubbling over with anticipation. He saw the parades of parents and children passing down the block. He kept watching them come and go as close as two doors up from his, but sadly, none of them came to his house at the end of the street.

Two hours passed without one trick-or-treater darkening his doorstep. When Gomer looked at his watch and saw it was 8 p.m., he knew his plans for a good time had passed. What was worse, he feared the parents would never bring their children to his house ever again. Shady Lane was just too dark and spooky.

He found ten peanuts in a jar in the cupboard, and since it was all he had to eat, he placed each one in this mouth and sucked all the nourishment from each morsel before he chewed and swallowed it. One of his front teeth was loose, and he feared he would soon be meeting the public with a tooth missing. He certainly had no money for dental work.

When he rose from his dilapidated chair to go inside the house, he noticed a light flickering in the middle of the street and decided to investigate.

On the other side of the deserted house, someone had placed an oil lantern and a platform constructed from plywood with a dead cat dangling from it. A sign hung from a nail that read: Happy Halloween Come To My House, Kiddies. I Have Something For You That Will Be Yummy. Gomer. The Last House At The End Of The Street.”

“Those bastards,” he growled. Now he understood all too well, why no children had come to his house. The Ramos brothers had struck again and deprived him of the one night of enjoyment he looked forward to all year.

He ripped the sign from the nail, extinguished the light, and took the things back to his house for collection by the garbage man the next morning.

Gomer was going on eighty-five years old and did not want to have a confrontation with these hoodlums. Rumor had it they were in a notorious gang that could only spell more trouble if he sought revenge. When they were younger, they had dented his mailbox with a baseball bat, toilet papered his trees and bushes, and hurled rotten eggs at the side of his house several different times, but he had never caught them doing it even once. He had no idea why they enjoyed picking on him. He’d never done anything to them to cause the habitual harassment.

This latest prank was the most insidious yet and had hurt him much more than the others. He wondered what these losers, who’d been kicked out of the local high school years ago and were still sponging off with their parents, would think of next to harass him. He could no longer ignore it. When he received his next social security check, he would buy a box of ammo for his shotgun. The next time they picked on him, regardless of the consequences, he would blow them to kingdom come or die trying. He wouldn’t take it anymore.

The next day, he answered a knock on his front door. Two men in suits stood eyeballing him after he opened it.

“What can I do for you, fellas?” Gomer asked politely.

The two men simultaneously withdrew their IDs from their inside suit pockets and showed them to him. The taller man said, “I'm Special Agent Fogarty, and this is my partner, Agent Kojak. We are investigating a series of malicious Halloween pranks that occurred this past evening. Some pervert inserted razor blades, slivers of glass, and tacks in candy given to the neighborhood children last night. Several of the victims are in critical condition due to internal bleeding.”

“That's terrible,” Gomer said, visibly distraught at the horror of such a monstrous act. “I can't imagine what type of person could do such a thing. I haven't heard of this type of mischief happening for quite a few years.” His face creased as if a sudden painful memory had crept into his thoughts, but he quickly dismissed it and said nothing.

Both agents noticed the sudden change in his expression from sadness and horror to a guilty recollection, but they let it slide for the time being.

“Did you have many trick-or-treaters last night, Mr. ...Ominous?”

Gomer didn’t like the accusatory tone of this question, and before he could answer. Kojak added, “I imagine you didn’t have many after you put the sign in the street with the dead cat. Were you trying to avoid handing out candy?”

“Actually, some of the local hoodlums put that sign in the street and scared away all the children, who might have come to my house. I wanted to hand out candy, and I spent a lot of my monthly social security check to have an ample supply on hand. I even bought a mask for the occasion, which I look forward to every year. Those miserable gangbangers ruined it for me, and I hope they rot in hell for their cruelty.”

“So, you didn't hand out any candy?” Fogarty asked as his partner wrote something in his notepad.

“Not a single piece. I didn't even open one bag. It's all going to waste. It probably won't be any good next year.”

Gomer saw the continued skepticism in their demeanor as they looked at the rotting planks on his front porch.

“Do I detect an insinuation in your tone?” Gomer said sternly.

“Not really. We're going door to door asking all the neighbors if they saw or heard anything suspicious, and several mentioned your scary sign,” Fogarty explained.

“They said the dead cat was extremely upsetting to the children,” Kojak added.

“As I said, it wasn't my sign, and I didn’t put a dead cat in the street to frighten the children. I wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“You certainly have a peculiar name, Mr. Ominous,” Fogarty replied.

“I didn't choose the name either. My parents gave it to me,” Gomer said flatly.

“You say you know who put the sign in the street?” Fogarty continued.

“Of course, I do. The same lowlife’s who threw rotten eggs at my house, battered my mailbox, and papered my bushes and trees.”

“Have you reported these harassments to the police?” Kojak asked pointedly.

“Many times, but since I didn't see the bastards when they did it, it's useless to report them.”

Fogarty exhaled. “Just for the record, who do you suspect?”

“The Ramos brothers did all of it. All three are vicious members of a gang. They are responsible for all of the mischief that goes on in this neighborhood. But since their older brother is on the police force, the authorities look the other way. No one will do anything about the terror they bring to all the senior citizens around here. The old folks know what would happen if they blow the whistle. Everyone is frightened, but I’m not. I’m eighty-five years old, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Both detectives saw the pent-up anger in his eyes. Kojak made another note on his pad.

“So, what do you plan to do about these repeated attacks on your personal property?”

Gomer saw his last remark had piqued both agents’ interest. “Why do you ask, Agent Fogarty? Maybe you’d better read me my rights before I answer any more questions.”

Fogarty looked him squarely in the eye. “Let me give you a piece of advice before you get yourself in trouble. Don’t take the law in your own hands. If you do, you could spend the rest of your days behind bars.”

“And what would you do if these hoodlums defaced your property, just let them bully you?”

“Be sensible. You don’t actually know the Ramos brothers did these things. How can you expect the local authorities to arrest someone because you think they did it?”

“Every one knows they did it, but the police won’t intervene with their brother on the force.”

“Well, Mr. Ominous. I'm not related to them, but unless you catch them in the act, I can’t help you either. No one can. But, I promise to look into the matter on your behalf.”

Gomer looked surprised by Fogarty's remark as the agents turned and headed toward their Crown Vic in the street. He watched them drive away and went back inside.

* * *

Three days later while the Ramos family ate dinner, a brick shattered the front window of the living room facing the street. They heard the roar of an automobile speeding away. The three brothers bounded through the front door into the street, but by the time they reached the sidewalk, they only saw a dark colored car turning the corner a block away.

“Who the fuck would've have the balls to break our window?” Dom Ramos bellowed in disbelief.

“Somebody who's tired of living, I guess,” his brother, Guido replied.

“And who might that be?” Rudy Ramos asked.

The three brothers looked at each other scratching their heads and drew a blank. Then Dom finally said, “You don't think it was that crazy old man, do you?”

“Who?”

“You know that dweeb on Shady Lane where we put the sign on Halloween.”

“It couldn't have been him,” Rudy said. “He doesn't have a car. Remember that old wreck in the backyard that won’t start anymore?”

“Well, who else could it be?” Dom said, with a clueless expression on his face.

“Don't know,” Dom shook his head, and the brothers went inside.

Their mother was cleaning up the glass with a broom and a dustpan. The father said, “There's a message attached to the brick.” He handed it to Guido.

These words were scrawled in black Magic Marker on a crumbling piece of paper: Beware the Ripper.

“What the fuck?” Guido barked.

“Who is this Ripper character? Is this some kind of joke?”

“It doesn't seem like a joke to me,” Rudy said. They spent the rest of the night picking their brains about who this Ripper could be.

* * *

Two weeks later, when the brothers went to their Mercury Marquis parked across the street from their house, they found all four tires slashed with a note left under one of the windshield wipers that read: Beware the Ripper.

“What the fuck!” Guido bellowed. “We need to find this Ripper character and carve him a new asshole. If the gang gets wind of this shit, our reputation will suffer.”

“Call Joe. We need to report this vandalism so we can file an insurance claim with Allstate,” Dom said.

Rudy called their oldest brother, the police officer, to come out and file a report.

An hour later, Joe shared a brew with his brothers at the kitchen table. “So, Bros, who have you screwed over lately with your lame shenanigans?”

“What do you mean, Joe?” Rudy asked.

“I mean why are you nimrods playing pranks on innocent people like that old geezer on Shady Lane. I just got a call from an FBI agent, who says you put a sign in the middle of the street to scare kids away from his house on Halloween.”

“You mean the old man blew the whistle on us. He has bigger balls than I thought.”

“I don’t know who reported it, but this Fed named Fogarty asked me to check into it. He told me someone had reported me for not coming down on you screw-ups because I’m your brother.” He let this sink in and then he said, “I blew the bastard off and told him to go fuck himself, but he said I hadn't heard the end of this, and if you clowns bother the old man again, there'll be hell to pay.”

“You told him to go fuck himself. Cool.” Dom chuckled. “That's telling him.”

“This is serious. I don't want to hear of you messing with the old geezer again. He's off limits, do you hear?”

“Okay. Okay. He's off limits.” Rudy repeated, trying to calm the waters. “We were just having a little fun.”

“So, who do you think fucked up your tires?” Joe asked.

“We don't have a clue. He calls himself The Ripper.”

“The Ripper? Like the guy who carved up the women in London?”

“Yeah. He pitched a rock through our front window last week and left a note.”

“With Mama and Papa there?”

“Yeah,” Rudy said, shaking his head. “We were all sitting at the supper table when it happened.”

“And you didn't see who did it?”

“No. We just saw a dark colored car turning the corner a block away.”

“You guys have stepped in some shit this time. I think you might deserve it after all the fucked up things you've done.”

“I hate to hear you say that, bro,” Rudy said, mocking a wounded expression.

“Anyway, be careful. Tell Mama and Papa I'll stop by soon.”

“The four brothers hugged each other and went their separate ways.”

* * *

Two weeks later to the day, someone poisoned the Ramos dog with hamburger laced with arsenic. On the front step, the apparent perpetrator had written in chalk: Beware the Ripper. The brothers continued to canvas the neighborhood, asking everyone if they’d seen anyone suspicious prowling around last night.

Everyone they talked with said they’d not seen a thing.

Just as before, the only one they could think of who might be holding a grudge was the geezer they’d harassed for so many years.

* * *

Two weeks later to the day after their dog was poisoned, the brothers found the four new tires they had replaced on their Marquis slashed with a note under the windshield wiper that read: Stay Away From Shady Lane. It was signed The Ripper.

That evening, they decided they were men, not mice. They borrowed their Papa’s Toyota Camry and drove to Shady Lane to talk to the old man.

They parked across the street in the shadows. The streetlight was still out, and the added darkness made everything seem even more creepy and foreboding. It was eight o'clock, and they didn't see a single light on inside the house.

“What do you make of no lights in the house at this time of night?” Dom asked, lighting a cigarette.

“Don’t know. Maybe he went out,” Rudy answered.

“Maybe, but it's unlikely,” Dom continued. “I don’t think the creep has two nickels to rub together. And, as far as I know, he’s never had a friend to his name. He's a real loner. He's been living by himself since I was a paperboy when I was ten years old. People on the street then were actually afraid of the old bastard. He had a lazy eye that looked half covered over with what looked like a spider web. I don't think it was real, and it looked really scary.”

“The first time I talked to him,” Guido recalled, “he couldn’t look at me with both eyes at the same time. One eye was looking at the ceiling, and the other looking at the floor. It was really creepy.”

“Where could the old bastard be?” Dom blew a perfect smoke ring. “It's too early to go to bed.”

“I think I see a sign on the door?” Guido said, squinting toward the porch. “I'll take a look.”

Guido got out of the car and headed for the old man's yard. He looked at the sign, walked back to the Camry, and got in.

“What did it say, Guido?” Rudy asked.

“It says the house has been condemned, and they will be tearing it down on March 10.”

“That's tomorrow.” Dom said. “Where is the old man?”

Suddenly a light crossed in front of the front window.

“Look at that,” Rudy whispered.

“Someone's in there. Who else could it be but the old man?”

The three brothers exited the car and headed for the dark, ominous structure shrouded in black shadows. Guido opened the front gate hanging by one hinge, and they bounded up the three steps to the landing.

With no hesitation, Dom rapped hard on the front door. They waited, but no one answered. An eerie silence hung in the air. An owl hooted somewhere behind the house.

“Hey old man, open up,” Dom shouted coarsely. “We’re not here to bust your balls. We only want to talk to you.”

They waited, but nothing stirred inside. The only sound was their own heavy breathing.

Dom knocked again, and through the glass panel in the front door, they saw a lit candle float across the interior behind a gauzy curtain.

Assuming the old man would come forth, they waited for a response, but nothing happened.

“What do you think?” Dom asked. “He’s in there, but he doesn’t want to talk to us.”

Rudy tried the door, and finding it locked, he removed a credit card from his wallet, stuck it into the crack in the latch, and after sliding it downward, the door creaked open a crack.

Darkness enveloped the interior as black as India ink.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Guido stammered. “You know what Joe said about hassling the old man.”

“Dom said boldly, “We came here to talk to the old man, and they're tearing the house down tomorrow morning. This might be our only chance to ask him about the Ripper. Stand back.” Dom pushed Rudy aside and rushed into the blackness. The others followed.

Once inside, they heard the sound of something heavy falling with a finalistic clunk behind them. Bright lights flooded the space within like a baseball stadium and blinded them. Ten figures emerged from all sides with baseball bats and iron pipes. A vicious series of bone crunching whacks sent the brothers to the floor, writhing, and screaming.

When they saw their attackers trade their clubs for machetes, they begged for mercy, but the men in black with red tarantulas emblazoned on their chests just laughed and kept hacking long after the screaming had stopped. When they finished, the room and everything in it were soaked with blood.

The Tarantula gang lifted the bar from the door, turned off the lights, and headed for a black van parked in the shadows down the street. The stench of death and bodily fluids emanated from the house like a heavy, suffocating curtain. Several rats scurried in through the open door. Later, an alley cat, a mongrel dog, and a raccoon joined them for a midnight snack.

The next day, when the wrecking crew arrived to demolish the dilapidated structure, the supervisor smelled the stench and went inside to investigate. After he spewed his guts over the carnage, he called 9-1-1.

Agents Fogarty and Kojak arrived shortly after the rescue squad and the CSI groups. After entering the house and looking at the crime scene, they both dry heaved and bolted for a breath of fresh air.

“Christ!” Kojak barked. “It smells like a slaughterhouse in the dead of summer in there.”

Fogarty said, “It is a slaughterhouse, Partner.” He kept sucking in air like a fish out of water, withdrew a pack of cigarettes from his inside pocket, and lit up.

A uniform walked up to them. “I’m Toast. You're Fogarty and Kojak, aren't you?”

“The detectives smiled at the peculiar introduction, and Fogarty answered, “Yeah. We talked to the owner the day after Halloween. He said he had an ax to grind with some ball busters, who kept harassing him, and he was gonna get even.”

“Did you find any IDs?” Kojak said, unraveling the wrapper on a Tootsie Roll Pop.

“Yeah, the cash was gone if they had any, but we found three drivers licenses belonging to the Ramos Brothers swimming in the blood, gore, and shreds of clothing. We assume it‘s them, but we won’t know for sure until the autopsy.”

“These are the guys Ominous wanted dead,” Fogarty said. “I don't know how he did it, but he must have lured them over here and got a group of bad asses with pipe wrenches and machetes to waste them for him. Do you know about his history with the Ramos brothers?”

“Yeah, I know all about the problems he had, and I wanted to help him, but he never caught them red-handed. My hands were tied.”

Kojak shook his head somberly, “Now he’ll probably spend his final days in the slammer with some other gangbangers leaning on him. We warned him not to take the law in his own hands. I feel sorrier for the old man than these jerk offs, but I’d say this is an open and shut case, Toast. Have you cuffed him yet?”

“Didn't you see the wrecking ball outside?”

“Yeah, we saw it. What's that about anyway?”

“Mr. Ominous died the week after Halloween. Once the authorities inspected the structure of this place and looked inside, they condemned the building. It was supposed to be demolished this morning. When the wrecking crew arrived, and smelled the bodies, they called 9-1-1.”

“It looks like the rats had a feast in there,” Fogarty groaned.

“It was more than rats,” Toast added with a sour expression. “I saw a cat, an old dog, and a raccoon chowing down, too, before we shooed them away.”

“Do have any idea who could have done something this depraved?” Kojak asked, sucking on a toothpick.

“It’s obviously a gang thing. The Ramoses were members of the Dragons who are archenemies of the Tarantulas. They kill each other every month or so. I guess it was the Tarantulas turn to draw blood this month. Ominous must have found out about this rivalry and got word to the Tarantulas they were going to be here last night. They were waiting for the poor bastards with the bone busters and jumped them when they came in.”

“Looks to me like they brought more than bone busters,” Fogarty replied, as the coroner’s crew wheeled out the first limp body bag.”

“They just used the lead pipes to soften them up. Then, they sliced and diced them with the machetes and the chainsaw. It was one grisly sight,” Toast exclaimed as the second limp body bag came forth.

“But how did Ominous get them here last night if he died several weeks ago,” Kojak asked.

“That’s the missing piece of the puzzle. I guess he or someone he knew arranged it beforehand.”

“It’s unlikely,” Fogarty replied, “if he died right after Halloween. Did you search the premises yet?”

Toast nodded and said, “We did a cursory check and found a half a gallon of spoiled milk and a jar of pickles in the fridge. The pantry was full of Halloween candy.”

“Halloween candy?” Fogarty asked, as another body bag was wheeled toward the parking lot.

“Yep. Four shelves full of it. By the way, did you guys ever find out who put the razor blades and such in the candy on Halloween?”

“Nope. We still don't have a clue who did it?”

“Rumors were circulating Ominous did it.”

“Maybe, but I don't think so. Kojak and I talked to him about that, and he said the sign these dead clowns put in the street stopped the children from coming to his house. That's why he was so upset with them.” Fogarty turned to Kojak and said, “While we’re here, let's take a look at the candy.”

“Do you think there's something wrong with it?” Toast gasped with a worried look.

“I don't know, but I wouldn't eat any of it,” Fogarty said sternly.

“Damn, I saw Harry taking a few pieces off-the-shelf right after we arrived,” Toast said, scratching his head.

“Are you serious? A cop should know better than to tamper with items from a crime scene,” Kojak groused.”

“He said he missed breakfast, and he was starving.”

“Where is he now?”

“That's his car right there.” Toast pointed to a Crown Vic in the driveway. “He must be here somewhere. He began to shout, “Harry, where are you?”

The three of them started searching the house.

They went through the few rooms on the first level and then upstairs and didn't find Harry. When they opened the screen door to the back porch, they saw the police officer’s body on the ground just past the back steps. His hands still gripped his throat, and blood had run from his mouth down his chin and pooled under his head. His eyes were glassy and unseeing. He was dead, and his shredded tongue protruded from between his teeth.

“The hungry bastard choked on something in the candy. Old man Ominous must've been the Halloween killer after all,” Toast said, picking a Big Top candy wrapper off the ground.

“Maybe so,” Fogarty replied skeptically, “But if he was the killer, he sure was a good liar. He told us he never opened one bag of candy when we questioned him. And the way he said it was like he expected us to check on it to corroborate his story. When we didn't check, he seemed disappointed.”

“What did you expect him to say?” Toast asked, rolling his eyes.

“I don’t know, but I don’t see Ominous as the Halloween Killer.”

They went to the pantry and found ten bags of unopened candy of various brands on the two upper shelves. The two lower shelves had sacks of loose candy and about thirty pieces of specially wrapped generic candy in a giant bowl. The wrapper they found on the ground next to the dead police officer’s body matched several pieces in the bowl, but not the pieces in the unopened candy bags.

“The unopened candy may be what the old man purchased and not this generic stuff. Maybe he was telling the truth.”

“Then where did the deadly candy come from?” Toast asked. “Everyone says the old man didn’t have a friend in the world, and he hadn’t had a visitor for years. Where did this mystery person come from?”

They looked at each other and had no answers.

Toast pointed to an obscure sign nailed to the wall outside the front door. “What’s your take on the sign?”

“What sign?” Fogarty asked.

“Oh, maybe you didn't see it yet. Step closer.”

A sign with barely visible letters that appeared to be scrawled in blood read: Beware the Ripper.

“That's what Joe Ramos told me was written on the notes his brothers got when someone threw a rock through their window, slashed their tires twice, and killed their dog,” Toast explained.

“Who in the hell is the Ripper?” Kojak asked sucking a Red Devil fireball.

Toast shrugged his shoulders, and turning away, stepped back inside the house, holding his nose.

Moments later, the agents heard him retching his guts out moments later when the crime scene crew wheeled out several open stainless steel basins of skin slices, hanks of hair, and bone fragments unidentifiable with a particular brother.

The agents returned to their Crown Vic. While Fogarty drove, Kojak ran the name Ominous through Motor Vehicles and found there was a Maude Ominous listed at the Shady Lane address for years until 2006. He also found someone named Jacqueline Ominous had a license twenty-five years ago that expired and was never renewed.

When the agents arrived back at the office, Fogarty started checking on the history of Gomer Ominous and discovered he had been married to Maude Snyder and had a daughter named Jacqueline, who had spent most of her life in a mental institution. He called the Rosewood Sanatorium where she had been a patient since 1984. “This is Special Agent Fogarty from the FBI. Can I speak with someone in authority who could tell me if Jacqueline Ominous is still a patient there?”

Fogarty was transferred to another line. It rang three times and a woman answered. Fogarty introduced himself again and repeated his question.”

“My name is Marjorie Flanders. I am the director here. I'm sorry, but I cannot give out information about our patients on the phone. You will have to come to the Sanitarium and fill out the necessary paperwork.”

“Look, Mrs. Flanders. I can get a court order if I have to, but that will take time and more people could die. Do you want that on your conscience?”

“I’m sorry, I’d like to help, but…”

“I’m not asking for the moon. I just want to know if she’s still there. A serial killer is on the loose who slaughtered ten children.” Fogarty winked at Kojak. “The coroner is scraping their remains into body bags as we speak.”

Flanders’ long silence told Fogarty he had struck a nerve with this remark. Finally, her rigid adherence to the rules softened and she said nervously, “This may cost me my job, but due to the extenuating circumstances, I want to help. Miss Ominous had been a patient with us for over thirty years, but she escaped from our care while attending her father's funeral three weeks ago. We notified the authorities, and they have been looking for her ever since.“

“How did she escape?”

“Sadly, she brutally attacked her armed escort, who is still in critical condition. Somehow, she got her hands on a butcher knife from the kitchen and slit his throat. Miss Ominous is highly schizophrenic and is extremely dangerous. Do you have any information concerning her possible whereabouts?”

“No, I don't, but we suspect she may have arranged the murder of three individuals in Montclair, New Jersey who threatened her father, Mr. Gomer Ominous. Do you think it’s possible she could drive a car from Cleveland to New Jersey after being confined for all those years?”

“It's hard to imagine, but she took the keys of a Nissan Altima from the man she stabbed and drove it away. Miss Ominous is highly intelligent and very resourceful, in spite of her psychosis.”

“Can you tell me what caused her to be committed in the first place?”

Flanders thought about the rules regarding confidential information, and then continued, “Well, they can only fire me once. She butchered several students at college in her senior year and later confessed to doctoring candy with razor blades on Halloween. She poisoned and maimed quite a few children in 1984. Several of them died of internal bleeding. I hope this helps.”

“I'm afraid she's up to her old tricks,” Fogarty confessed more than he should have to Flanders. “We had an outbreak of mischief this past Halloween. Several children were hurt badly. One more question. It's a long shot, but…”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea if Miss Ominous has ever mentioned “The Ripper?”

“It's odd you mention that. Inside these walls, it’s common for a patient to believe he is someone else. Some think they're Jesus Christ, or Napoleon, Elvis, or God knows who, but Jacqueline always had the delusion that she is a direct descendent of Jack the Ripper. Isn't that incredible? He was like a rock god to her by today's standards. She posted pictures she drew of him all over the walls.”

“Mrs. Flanders, could you send me a fax of one of her most detailed drawings? It might help.”

“Sure. I'd be happy to.”

Fogarty gave her the telephone number, and five minutes later, the image scrolled up on his fax machine.

As soon as the agents saw the drawing, their mouths fell open in disbelief.

“It's Gomer Ominous,” Fogarty exclaimed as he glared at the detailed portrait of a young man with one lazy eye drawn meticulously in charcoal.”

“What does it mean?” Kojak asked. “No one ever found out who Jack the Ripper was, but he must have died decades ago.”

“Keep in mind, Kojak, the note didn't say Jack the Ripper. It said the Ripper. Maybe Gomer really is a direct descendent of the monster who terrorized London, and Jacqueline is a chip off the old block.”

The phone rang, and Fogarty answered, “Fogarty.” Kojak saw his partner’s face light up as he listened intently and made some cryptic notes on a pad. He saw his face darken and then pale in color from something the person was telling him.

After putting down the phone, he slumped backward in his chair, unable to speak for several moments, just staring into space.”

“Who was it, Partner? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“It was Toast with an update. They found Jacqueline Ominous’ body with her throat cut in a dumpster close to where the Ramos brothers’ Ma and Pa live. The body had been in there for several days. Joe Ramos, the cop, told me someone slashed all four tires on his brothers’ Mercury Marquis for the second time a few days before her body was discovered. On the morning before the massacre, the mailman delivered a letter from The Ripper warning them to stay away from Shady Lane or else.”

“Well. I’ll be. I guess The Ripper is dead, and possibly the Halloween killer. Maybe we can close the book on this one, Partner.”

“There’s more. The boys down at the station put one of their ace techies on Gomer’s past history. He found the old man became a sperm donor in 1984 and impregnated hundreds of women for over thirty years.”

“Do they have any records on how many of the women went to term and gave birth?”

“They do, and he gave me the estimate the techies gave him.”

“Well, how many potential psychopaths are walking the streets right now that are descendents of the London butcher?”

“The records indicate Gomer sired 79 children, who sired 115 children, who sired 203 more children. Toast says the genealogist they consulted estimates over a thousand new Rippers could be lurking in a dark alley somewhere in the world.”

“No wonder there are so many nut cases like Dahmer, Bundy, Manson, Ed Gein,” Kojak remarked.

“Mateo, I have more news. Some good and some bad. Which do you want first?”

While Kojak tried to decide, Fogarty said, “Do me a favor, ask for the good news first.”

Kojak stared at his partner incredulously and started to sweat. He didn't like where this was going so he unwrapped a grape Tootsie Roll, one of his favorites, and popped it into his mouth. “All right, Partner. Let's have the good news first.”

Fogarty said brightly, “Toast said they traced the candy, the arsenic, and the mind altering drugs to a local address, and they arrested the Halloween Killer, who confessed to all the heinous crimes during their interrogation. And can you believe it? The psychopath is one of the descendents of Jack the Ripper from Gomer's sperm.”

“Damn. That is great news,” Kojak shouted jubilantly. “I wasn’t sure we would conclusively nab the miserable child killer. It's almost a miracle, we got the lowlife scum. In my opinion, anyone who hurts a child should be drawn and quartered in the town square.”

Fogarty's face darkened. “I'm sorry, Partner, but do you really mean what you just said?”

“Of course, I do. Whatever punishment we dole out is too good for any miserable degenerate who blatantly hurts a child. And when we finish with them, they will certainly rot in hell for all eternity for what they’ve done. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“I don’t want to curb your enthusiasm, Partner, but you’re gonna find out soon enough.”

“What?” Kojak said, wondering what could possibly be negative about everything coming together wrapped in a tight, beautiful bow.

“Remember in 1998, when you found out from the fertility doctor you couldn’t have another child, and Louise and you adopted Madeline when she was four years old?”

“Of course. It was one of the happiest day’s of my life.”

“Madeline is the Halloween killer. She’s the miserable degenerate and lowlife scum you just referred to. I don’t know if she’s gonna rot in hell for all eternity, but I know she’s gonna fry in the electric chair.”

FEELINGS

A 747 carrying 279 passengers had crashed into a mountain near Dulles Airport en route to Washington DC. Harry Crood, a reporter for Allied Press, was on his way in his SUV to the airport where the loved ones of flight 357 had been told to meet with representatives of One-Stop Airways.

It was the morning rush hour, and Harry drove like a maniac to beat as many of the reporters from the other networks to the terminal as he could. In his haste to be first, he ignored the danger, ran a red light, and barreled through the intersection like a tank. A small Kia that had the right-of-way skidded out of control into a lumber truck to avoid colliding with the humongous SUV. Harry knew it was his fault, but he didn't hesitate one nanosecond to consider the possible injuries to the people in the other car. He had no time to fill out an accident report and dick around with an insurance claim. He had bigger fish to fry.

When he pulled into the terminal, he called over one of the valets and gave him a nice tip to park his car in the lot. He knew from experience, he would be there for several hours interviewing the relatives of the dead. The plane had exploded in flames upon impact, and everyone aboard had immediately received a free cremation, courtesy of One-Stop Airways. He knew exactly where the meeting would take place. He’d been there and done that many times.

The representatives of the airline usually let a few of the mourners into a small anteroom before they were summoned into a larger conference room. This went on for hours. The process was ideal for his selfish purposes. He could catch the bereaved person in his or her most emotional and vulnerable moment. They were fair game to all the bloodthirsty reporters circling the room like sharks. The airline staff gave each loved one the same heart-breaking synopsis of the crash privately, rather than announcing over the loudspeaker that everyone have been burned to a crisp, and there was nothing else to say.

Harry saw his cameraman, waved him over, and said excitedly. “God, Bennie. I'm so happy you got here so soon. How did you do it?”

“I stopped for a brew at the Slippery Nipple, and I saw the breaking news on TV and came running.”

“Here comes the first mourner,” Harry said, running a comb through his perfectly quaffed hair. “Roll 'em, Bennie. And be sure to put some light on their faces. I hate dark pictures. You can't see their pain as clearly.”

The first woman, who was about fifty years old with her head stuffed in a handkerchief, shuffled through the door. She was in a pitiful state. Her face was red and streaked with tears. Her makeup running down both cheeks made her look like she was trying out for a horror film.

“I’m Harry Crood from Allied Press. Did you have a loved one on flight 357?” He knew she did, but the question always cracked the ice.

She choked a tearful response, “Yes. I did.”

“Was it a close relative?”

“He was my grandson. My daughter sent him to me so I could babysit for her while she went on a cruise next week.”

She sobbed uncontrollably into a handkerchief and tried desperately to catch her breath so she could speak.

“How old was your grandson?”

“He was only six.” The woman broke into a hysterical wail. “What am I going to tell my daughter? She'll never see Mikey again.”

Harry ignored this response and went in for the kill shot knew would tear the hearts out of every person watching the broadcast and make him a player on the evening news that night.

“How did you feel when you heard there were no survivors?” He wrinkled his forehead to pretend he felt at least a crumb of concern and sympathy for the poor soul on the brink of a breakdown. But the total lack of compassion for the pain this devastated woman felt appeared like a red flag in front of a bull on his emotionless face.

The woman saw this immediately, and teetered back on her heel as if she had been slapped in the face. “What kind of monster are you?” she screamed. “My little grandson has just been incinerated in a plane crash, and you want to know how I feel about it?”

“Mrs. Jacob French, come to Room 59 at the end of the hall,” came a voice on the loudspeaker.

The woman’s eyes were ablaze as she swung her enormous purse with everything but the kitchen sink at him with all her might. The blow landed on Harry’s temple and sent him sprawling to the floor. Before the cameraman could remove his eyes from the monitor on his camera and retreat, the woman pounced on him with her sharp fingernails, kicking, and screaming at the top of her lungs.

* * *

Later that afternoon, while the doctor in the emergency room set his broken leg in a cast, Harry saw the footage of the distraught woman attacking him. The segment when he asked, “How did you feel when you heard there were no survivors?” might be devastating to his career. The inept cameraman had panned in for a close-up on his face rather than the bereaved woman and caught him like the proverbial deer in the headlights. His blank expression left no doubt to anyone watching he was completely devoid of feeling, not only for the woman, but also for anyone or anything except himself. He wondered if he would ever recover from this damning clip that was certain to go viral on YouTube.

Bennie only had a few cuts and bruises, and he’d been released from the hospital earlier. At least his own cameraman’s film wouldn’t be used to put the brakes on his budding career. The worst setback for Bennie was when the irate woman grabbed his camera and stomped on it until it flew apart. But, it was just another day in the life of a news photographer.

* * *

The doctor finally released Harry from the hospital during the evening rush hour, and he went home in a taxi. After paying the cabbie, he stood on the sidewalk in front of his house and looked for his wife, Millie, who was supposed to meet him on the corner and help him with the stairs. He glared nervously at the four steps he would have to negotiate with his crutches. He assumed it would be difficult, but he thought he could make it, if he took his time.

He withdrew his cell-phone and dialed the number for his house. After several rings, it went to voice mail. Where was Millie? And why was the house dark? She knew he would be here about now.

Well, he would give her a piece of his mind when she returned from wherever she’d gone. He turned his body toward the stairs leading to the porch and the front door of his townhouse. He’d received a crash course in the art of using crutches in the hospital but hadn't taken the lessons as seriously as he should have. But he wasn’t worried, yet. He didn’t think a person had to be a rocket scientist to climb four steps with crutches.

Five minutes later, he reached the threshold and awkwardly opened the screen door. He still thought it odd no lights were on inside as he peered through the glass insert in the entrance door. He fumbled for his key, inserted it in the lock without his crutches toppling over, and unlocked it. By tomorrow, he would be a crutches expert.

He pushed open the door and immediately felt an unease he had never felt before in his own home. The silence was so profound without his six-year-old son scurrying around on his big wheel, which was the bane of the neighborhood. He couldn't get his mind around it.

Typically, when he arrived home, Millie had something cooking on the stove, and the TV was blaring. He couldn't remember when he came home after dark and found no one in the house. He turned on the hall light and made his way into the kitchen.

When he reached to turn on the kitchen fluorescents, his right crutch slipped on the ceramic tile. He let out a yell and down he slid as if he’d just stepped on a patch of ice. The ceramic was wet, sticky, and slippery all at the same time.

What had Millie spilt on the floor? Had she gone to the store for some cleaning products? He finally struggled to his feet, and when he switched on the light, he found the floor was covered with swirls of designs fashioned in fresh blood. The unmistakable imprint of a woman’s breasts and thighs splayed in swirls of scarlet like a giant body painting reminded him of women mud wrestling on TV. He vomited all over the erotic designs, his senses reeling from the horror.

For some reason, his first thought was of Millie. It didn’t occur to him his life might be in danger, and the killer might still be in the house. It felt strange to place the welfare of another human being before himself. He didn't know if he had ever done it before.

Then, he felt cold steel on the back of his neck and flinched. A colder voice said, “Sit in this chair, Harry. I'm going to make you a star on the evening news.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Sit in the chair, or I'll blow your brains out.”

“Who are you? What do you want?” Harry asked fearfully.

“I'm Raymond, the guy who crashed into a lumber truck when you ran that red light this morning. Several planks on the back of the truck decapitated my wife when it crashed through the windshield. She’s dead because of you, ” the stranger shrieked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry lied.

“I saw you as clear as day when I veered around you. It’s a face I won’t forget anytime soon. Also, a sweet old lady approached me afterward and showed me a picture she took of you at the wheel with her phone, and she emailed it to me. I didn’t think I’d ever find you, but later, while I was crying my eyes out, drowning in my beer, I saw you on the news getting your ass kicked by that woman who lost her grandchild. I got your name from the station, and here I am.”

Harry stared into space and couldn't think of a reply. What could he say? This man was right. Everything that was happening was his fault. His blatant disregard for the traffic signal, and the consequence of running it, had caused this man, Raymond, to lose his wife. And, in retaliation, the madman had probably murdered Millie and his little son, Maximilian.

The emotion of that thought was building when Harry felt a sudden stab of pain across the back of his head. He hit the floor like a sack of potatoes, and fell atop his crutches with a thud. The impact on the tile floor shattered his good knee.

* * *

When Harry awoke, he found himself bound with duct tape to one of his kitchen chairs. He felt a terrible pain in what had been his good leg. Two excruciatingly bright lights were fixed on his face, so close, he couldn't see beyond them. He was groggy, and his head splitting.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw another kitchen chair positioned between two floodlights affixed to tripods atop two more end tables from the living room. His eyes finally focused, and he saw a human form strapped to the chair in front of him, covered by a sheet. Splotches of blood soaked the upper portion where the head would be. The sheet's occupant was not moving. Above the form under the sheet, he saw another floodlight fixed to another end table that was not turned on.

Suddenly, Harry heard a muffled whine from the right and squinting toward it, He couldn’t believe it when he saw Bennie, his cameraman, bound and gagged in a third chair. Had Raymond found his number in the telephone directory and tricked him to come over while he was unconscious? Or, did Bennie stop by to see how he was doing with the broken leg? Either way, it would probably cost him his life.

“Well, Sleeping Beauty is awake,” Raymond said from the darkness to the left. Harry turned and saw his worst nightmare step into the light with a 44 Magnum in his belt.

Harry tried to think of something eloquent to say to this man who was obviously there to kill him, but he was scared shitless. When he focused on the form in the chair across from him, he knew who it had to be. He wondered if the blood and gore on the floor was Millie’s, his son’s, or both. He couldn’t bear to think about something so horrible.

“As I said, before I clobbered you, I'm Raymond. You know Bennie. He stopped by to see how your broken leg is, and this is your wife in the chair under the sheet.”

“Millie!” Harry cried with what sounded like real emotional concern.

“I don't know what her name is, I'll take your word for it.”

“You killed my wife because I inadvertently ran a red light,” Harry moaned.

“Don't give me that bullshit. I saw your face through the windshield when you rocketed by me. I didn't see confusion. I saw someone hell-bent on getting somewhere fast regardless of the consequences. And later when I was crying my eyes out, wondering what I would do for the rest of my life without Wanda, I found out you were going to interview the relatives of the crashed airplane. Right, Harry?”

Every word the bastard said was true, and he couldn't deny it. Yet, he said, “You're insane.”

Raymond snapped, “Hey. I probably am, and I’ve probably got one foot in the grave, too, after what I’ve done and what I’m about to do. But before I go, now that Bennie is here with his camera, I’m gonna make you the star you always wanted to be. A first-class media asshole, whose face will be on every news program around the globe in the next few hours.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

“Where is my son, Raymond? If you hurt him, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

“In your wildest dreams, you chicken shit weasel. I don’t think so. But for your information, while you and your wife were unconscious, I dropped him at the daycare center down on the corner.”

“You what?”

“Stop worrying about the kid, a foster home is not so bad. I grew up in one myself. Would you rather I left him to play in the traffic during rush hour?”

Harry’s face creased with worry and the injustice of the intruder’s actions. “You left my son with some strangers?”

“People who weren’t even on the plane are dying because of you, Harry. Your son is gonna do fine. Much better than you are. I promise you.”

Raymond moved toward Bennie and cut through his duct tape with a bloody butcher knife. Then, he ripped the tape from around the photographer’s head. Bennie screamed in pain.

“Okay, Bennie,” Raymond said, “This is your chance to get an award yourself. Pick up your camera, and get ready to roll. You already have lights on it, so I can turn these off.” He snapped the floodlights off over Harry's head and turned on the ones over Millie’s head. “Get ready for the broadcast, Harry.”

“You miserable fiend!” Harry shouted, struggling with the duct tape.

“Harry. Calling me that is like calling the kettle black. Shut your trap, and look at the camera. I cleaned you up some while you were out, but you're going to have to win this award without any makeup. Get ready for the money shot. But this time, I’ll be asking you the question.”

Raymond withdrew his gun, and aiming it at Bennie’s head, he spoke slowly and precisely, “Bennie, first focus on Millie in the chair, and then pan toward Harry. Do what you think best on the first shot. Maybe, we can come back to Millie's headshot afterwards so you can pan in on the gory details a little more. But remember, the money shot is Harry’s face when I ask the question. You know the drill.”

Raymond lifted the bloody sheet from Millie's head, and she was startled awake. She was also bound and gagged to the chair with duct tape, and her face was battered and bloody.

Harry grimaced at the sight and thought of the blood on the floor he’d slipped on. He had caused a monster to enter their lives.

Millie’s eyes grew wide with fear remembering her horrific encounter with the maniac with the gun. She cried out, “He raped me, Harry, and he kept beating me. He made me do terrible things.” She turned to her husband with a split lip and one eye almost closed with an expression of hope that somehow he could save the day. “He says you ran a red light and caused an accident that killed his wife. You didn’t stop. Tell him, Harry. Tell him he’s making a big mistake. That you would never do such a thing. Tell him or he’s going to kill all of us.”

Harry had to stop this madman with his eloquence, and he knew on most days, he could sell glasses to a blind man. But Raymond’s eyes remained so scary and steadfast in their purpose; he kept struggled desperately to free himself instead.

Raymond reached as far as he could without blocking the lens of the camera and slit Millie’s throat from ear to ear. The reddest blood they had ever seen spurted in all directions from the wound and splattered the floor, the ceiling, the walls, and the three witnessing the horror.

Millie sucked futilely for breath through her mouth and the gaping hole in her throat. Raymond pointed his big 44 Magnum at Bennie’s head and said with heart attack seriousness, “If you want to live, keep the camera rolling and slowly pan to focus on Harry’s face.”

Bennie quickly complied, and Harry's grief stricken face filled the screen on the monitor.

“All right. It’s show time. Harry, how does it feel to cause someone you love to die a horrible death right before your eyes?”

Harry shook with emotion, tears streaming down his face, glaring at his wife's now lifeless body, and he was speechless. He could not utter a sound if his life depended on it, and it did.

“You know, Harry, I wasn't sure a worthless, unfeeling piece of shit like yourself would even shed a tear. I figured you might be more concerned about your makeup on camera than your wife’s life, but you surprised me. I actually did see some feelings you had for Millie, just like I had from my precious, Wanda. I’m sorry I got carried away and raped her. I was so mad at losing my wife, I wanted to sock it to you as hard as I could.”

They looked at each other for several moments, two men who had lost the women they loved.

Then Raymond said, “So, without further ado, I want to give the media something to remember you by for years to come. Bennie, are you getting this?”

Bennie tried to hold the camera still, but his hand was shaking badly.

“Bennie!!” Raymond screamed.

“Yes! I've got it!”

Raymond moved toward Harry, and making sure not to interfere with the camera POV, he withdrew his gun and blew Harry's head apart with one shot. Blood, brains, and gore spurted in clumps in all directions.

Without pausing a beat, Raymond put the gun in his mouth and blew his brains out the back of his head. More blood, brains, and gore decorated the wall, the floor, and the ceiling. It also ran down the lens of Bennie’s camera and part of his face.

The networks couldn't show the graphic violence of the two headshots, but they did broadcast as much of the conversation as they could. They also edited out Millie's horrific death scene.

Later that night, the tape mysteriously disappeared, and the next day it was the most viral video of all, displacing Miley Cyrus at her position at number one.

Even without his head, Harry was a media star at last.

POWDERPUFF

Powderpuff, a large Doberman, sat on his pillow throne on the left side of the sofa and watched the news on the 60-inch TV. He waited patiently for another canine to appear on either a show or a commercial. The news bored him.

Max and Denise, his owners, had been glued to their set, listening to updates about the outbreak of a virus that had a 100% mortality rate. Once infected, the host became a ravenous ghoul in less than thirty minutes and would immediately attack healthy humans as he discovered them with no regard for who they were. In some cases, the zombie, for lack of a better word, mothers had devoured their children, children had devoured their mothers, husbands had eaten their wives, and so on.

The newscast showed the horror as it unfolded in the foreign setting of Uganda in East Africa. Experts contended the infected had to be killed by a shot to the head, a crushing blow to the skull with a solid implement such as a hammer, or trauma to the brain inflicted by an instrument like a sword or a knife. Afterward, the bodies had to be burned to prevent further spread of the contagion.

They contended there was no known cure for the disease. Once a person was infected, they had only minutes to live before they became crazed psychopaths. The authorities indicated unless a vaccine was forthcoming immediately, the prospects for the survival of the human race was grim. Max wondered if George Romero had psychic abilities when he wrote the screenplay for the classic horror movie, Night of the Living Dead. His embellishment of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend was all coming true.

In order to contain the outbreak on foreign soil from contaminating the United States and other countries, air travel had been suspended indefinitely. The military of each nation controlled their borders and would not allow anyone to enter their country for any reason. The strict quarantine was the final line of defense to curtail the worldwide contagion, but it was only a temporary Band-Aid on a lethal wound.

A small plane flying under the radar with an infected victim presented the first obvious flaw in the plan. Yet, the danger was not considered catastrophic. Very few people owned a small plane, and even those who did would be a zombie thirty minutes after contracting the disease. Also, in strict adherence to the law, the authorities could blow any plane they detected out of the sky with no questions asked.

“Can you imagine being on vacation when the outbreak occurred, and then finding out you are under quarantine and may never be able to return home again.” Max said, watching the horror unfolding on the TV screen.

“No, I can't. What about travelers who have children or elderly parents at home,” Denise answered.

Unfortunately, those people are fucked for the common good, but it's the luck of the draw, we're fighting for our lives now. God knows it won’t be long before a sick person crosses the border somewhere and infects everyone else. Then were all fucked. This virus is a ticking time bomb. Once it detonates, it's Armageddon.”

“Well, Max. We’ve had five extinctions before. This will be the sixth. I'll bet nobody would have predicted millions of years ago that the greatest killing machine of all with an enormous brain like the T-Rex would become extinct.”

“It was a super beast all right, but the Ice Age took it down. But extinction by a meteor is one thing, but this virus could bring the ultimate end to everything. When the dead feast on the living, well nothing, can get any worse than that.”

“Freezing your ass off after a meteor obliterates the planet is probably not a walk in the park,” Denise said, chuckling.

“But in spite of the massive loss of life, a small seed of humanity remained and lay dormant for millions of years, and was somehow reborn, and blossomed again. Maybe, even that seed will be obliterated forever, this time.”

“Well, Max. Forget the rest of mankind for a moment. What are we going to do next, quit our jobs, or continue working? So far, the virus has been confined to Africa. If it breaks out in the US, it will sweep across the country like wildfire.”

“Let's continue with our daily routines a little while longer. Maybe some Einstein will find the cure and Armageddon will never come. I have three weeks vacation I can take if I have to. How much do you have?”

“I have about twelve days, but I don't think we need to worry about vacation when the whole corporation will go right down the tube in a matter of days if there is an outbreak.”

“Probably, but we don't know how long it will take for sure.”

“Okay. We’ll keep on working until we see the shit hit the fan. After that, it won't matter. There'll be riots, all the corporations will fold, and the federal government will collapse. There will be raping and pillaging in the streets. We'd better take our savings out of the bank while they still exist.”

“Let's pack our bags, so we can move at a moments notice. Maybe we can make it to my father's cabin in the mountains if we get out in time. The chaos in the cities with zombies running amok, infecting everyone will be impossible to deal with. Let's go to Publix and stock up all the food and supplies we can cram into the SUV so we can leave immediately if the end comes.”

“Don't forget the dog food,” Denise reminded him. Powderpuff barked excitedly when he heard that. “If a zombie touches a hair on her head, there will be hell to pay with me.”

“I love Powderpuff, too, but she's been in the house since she was of pup. She wouldn’t last a nanosecond in the wild. In spite of her size, she's a real pussycat. Some varmint, a wolf or a bear, would certainly tear her limb from limb.”

“She won't be in the wild, Max. She'll be in the cabin with us. Even so, she's a Doberman. She hasn't had a reason to flex her muscles, but I'll bet she can. Look at those teeth. How would you like them to clamp down on your ass? Your certainly not suggesting we leave her here for the zombies, are you?”

“Of course not, I don't know what I was thinking. I just can't picture Powderpuff in a cabin in the mountains.”

“Hey. I can't picture us there either, but we must do whatever it takes to survive as long as we can.”

* * *

Time passed, and the worldwide quarantine worked for several months. Several close calls occurred at the borders, but they were quelled by an instant display of firepower.

Finally, the dreaded news of the infected, ravenous ghouls breaking through the barriers became more common.

Zombies in lifeboats from a cruise ship had come ashore and contaminated the people along the coast of Australia. The entire continent had been lost in no time. The handwriting was on the wall. Armageddon would soon become a reality unless a cure was found.

Finally, the United States, separated by oceans with awesome military forces, prevailed as the last remaining hope for civilization.

Then the day finally came when zombies broke through the quarantine on the East Coast, and the end was eminent. Max, Denise, and Powderpuff piled into their SUV; already stocked with everything they could cram into it. They waved to their neighbors, George and Linda, as they drove away as if they were going to the local convenience store. But the items piled to the ceiling inside the SUV told the real story, and the neighbors’ faces showed it. They all knew they wouldn’t be getting together for bridge ever again.

Max headed for his father’s cabin deep in the mountains.

“Did you remember Powderpuff’s dog food? I put it on top of the dryer in the laundry room so you would see it.”

“I got it, Denise. Stop worrying,” Max snapped.

When they left the interstate after hours of driving, they started up a desolate, two-lane road barely wide enough for two cars to pass, let alone an SUV. They didn't see a single car for the next two hours.

“Wow, Max. I knew it would be lonesome here, but I thought we would see a human being now and then.”

“Actually the fewer we see the better. Remember, people are our enemies now.”

They heard the sound of an engine, and through the trees, they saw a small plane spiraling out of control above them.

“Look, Max! That plane's in trouble. He's heading right into the side of the mountain.”

“There aren't supposed to be any planes. Remember, Denise?”

“Yeah. You're right. The pilot is breaking the law. I wonder where he came from.”

The plane disappeared behind the trees, and they heard a loud explosion and saw smoke billowing into the sky.

“Well, I guess it's safe to say whoever he was, he didn't make it,” Denise said sadly.

“Maybe it's for the best,” Max said without emotion.

When they reached the cabin on the crest of a hill, they sat in the SUV and peered at the expanse of the wilderness that stretched as far as their eyes could see.

“God, Max. This place is like another world. It's so desolate.”

Powderpuff barked and glared into the woods to the left of the cabin.

“This is our new home, Denise,” Max said coldly. “I hate to say it, till the very end.”

“The end?”

“We both know sooner or later, even this place will be overrun with zombies. Unless some genius comes up with a vaccine, we're just biding time.”

”How long do you think we have? Do I have time to write my memoirs? I brought some paper.”

“I don't have a clue. But you better keep it short. We can skate by on the food we brought for a month or so, and then if we're still alive, I'll have to see if I can hit anything with my trusty rifle.”

“You have a rifle?”

“No, it's in the cabin. I used to hunt with my father when I was a teenager. I was a pretty good shot then.”

“Gee. I didn't know I married an honest to God Daniel Boone.”

Max opened the car door. “Let's get this stuff in the cabin, the ice won't last forever. I sure hope the fridge still works.”

He saw the fear of the unknown and particularly the desolation of the mountains in her face. “Now don’t go bonkers on me. I'm sure there's no reception on the TV, but there is a shortwave radio. Maybe we can hear something about how bad things are now.

When Denise opened the rear door on her side, Powderpuff leaped out and made a beeline into the woods.

“Powderpuff!” Denise screamed. “Fuck. I should've known she might do this.”

“This place is full of all kinds of new smells and varmints scurrying about. She’s like a kid in a candy store.” Max yelled, “Powderpuff! Come back here this minute!”

They waited for her to come wagging her tail like she always had at home, but when she didn’t come, their brows creased with worry, fearing what their precious dog would get into.

“Max. We're going to have to go after her. Like you said, she's a babe in the woods. No matter how big she is she's just a giant pussy cat, who wouldn't hurt a fly.”

“God knows how long it's going to take to find her. She's always heeded our call in the city. We could see her for blocks, and she could see us. But this is a nightmare, and we need to get the stuff inside. It'll be dark soon.”

“All right, I'll start carrying in the food and supplies. Since you have experience in the woods, you go after Powderpuff and bring her back.”

“Good idea,” Max replied, “But I'm going to get my rifle first. There may be bars in them thar hills. In fact, I know there are.”

“Bears?”

“Yes. Sometimes they come right up to the window and look in.”

“Damn, Max, you're scaring me.”

“I'm sorry, but would you rather something unexpected come up and bite you on the ass if I didn’t tell you?”

“No.” she said with her lip trembling. “Now. I'm really worried about Powderpuff.”

“I am, too, actually. This is what I meant back at the house. I just didn’t know how to express it.”

Max went inside the cabin, came out with a rifle, and headed in the direction he last saw the Doberman.

“Powderpuff!” he shouted in a stern, no-nonsense voice, the kind their pet usually responded to right away.

This time she didn't.

Max liked Powderpuff, but he didn't love her like Denise did, and he was very unhappy about leaving his wife to bring in the supplies without him watching her back. She had to be careful, and so did he. The sun was going down, and he hadn't been in the forest for years. He remembered getting lost as a teenager, and his father had a hell of a time finding him.

He heard snaps, crackles, and the weird sounds of the wind whistling through the branches. If he did come upon a bear, his 22 might scare it off, but it wouldn't stop it if it attacked. A pack of wolves might also be a problem, but they were usually more afraid of humans than a bear.

“Powderpuff!” he shouted, getting madder and madder. He didn't need this shit right now.

He smelled smoke as he threaded deeper into the thick forest and saw the remnants of the airplane that crashed up ahead.

He approached the wreckage strewn about the ground. The cockpit was partially intact, but he didn't see the body of the pilot inside.

The windshield had caved in and was a splintered mass. The steel shell of the nose was smashed into the control panel. A jungle of wires hung from dials and meters all around.

Max didn't understand why the pilot was not inside unless he parachuted out before the crash. When they first saw the plane going down, they hadn't seen a chute. He didn't think there was room for the pilot to be thrown from the wreckage when it hit the trees.

He heard something scampering through the leaves behind the mangled fuselage. Squirrels?

As he continued to inspect all four sides of the plane, the sun was a dying ember in the sky. He didn’t want to stay in the forest all night. The moon was rising, but he could see very little under the thick canopy of trees. He decided to continue the search in the morning. Possibly, Powderpuff had already returned to the cabin, and he was wasting his time searching for her.

An hour later, Max was overjoyed when he saw the lights of the cabin in the distance. When he stepped on the porch, he exhaled a deep sigh of relief. He couldn't believe he’d actually had the savvy to find his way back in the dark after all the years he lived in the city.

When he entered the cabin, Denise rushed to him, threw her arms around him, and kissed him. “I was so worried I’d never see either one of you again,” she said holding him in a strong embrace. Then, about fifteen minutes ago, I heard a whimper at the front door, I looked out, and Powderpuff was there with his tongue hanging out. Now, you come along. This day is turning out a lot better than I thought it would. After it got dark, I didn’t think you’d find your way back until morning.”

“Believe me I was damned lucky I found my way. Remember I'm a city boy. I kept calling, and she wouldn’t come. I couldn’t see a thing, and I thought she might have returned to the cabin. Where is she anyway? Why isn’t she slobbering all over me?”

Denise looked at him sadly. “Something attacked her out there. She looks like she was in a war. She has a deep scratch on her right paw, but she’ll be all right. I tried to feed her, but she wouldn’t eat. She’s exhausted, and she’s resting on her throne in the bedroom. I don’t want her out here when we go to bed. It’s too lonely. She’ll be scared.”

“So, you don’t think it’s serious, and she’ll be fine.”

“I think so. I put some Neosporin on it and wrapped it in a bandage. What else could I do? You don’t know any vets around here, do you? Poor Powderpuff. I don’t think she’ll be anxious to go outside anytime soon. She looked terrified when she came out of the big black forest.”

“No more than I was. It was scary out there. I heard a lot of strange noises.”

“I'm sorry I made you go after her, but I love Powderpuff, and I was worried about her.”

“I see that, but you weren’t worried about me getting mauled by a wild beast.”

“I'm sorry, Max. What’s done is done. And we’re safe.”

He went into the kitchen and found a Coors Light in the fridge. He popped the top, sat on the sofa, and said, “It wasn’t a wild goose chase entirely. I did find the wreckage of the plane that crashed.”

“Did you find the pilot's body?”

“No. I didn't. The whole front of the cockpit was crushed in. I don't think he could've survived unless he parachuted out before hand. I looked all around the wreckage, but I didn't see any trace of him. It was getting dark, but I think I would've seen him if he was there.”

“How about a TV dinner?” Denise suggested, hoping it would lift his spirit.

Max frowned, and then said, “It’ll be fine, but let me rest a minute and finish my beer.”

Denise looked worried as she bit her fingernails and peered into the black, foreboding darkness outside. When Max finally finished his beer, she went into the kitchen to nuke a Hungry Man dinner for him. She’d eaten a ham and cheese sandwich earlier.

Max got up, went to a roll-top desk, and started to fiddle with the knobs on a two-way radio he and his father had listened to years before. He changed the channels, and it crackled to life with static.

Denise called him to the dinner table. His TV dinner was ready, so he left the radio tuned to the station he and his father always listened to, went into the kitchen, and joined Denise at the table.

In between bites, Max said,” It’s been a rough day. I’m exhausted from the long drive and searching for Powderpuff in the woods. I think sex is out of the question tonight.”

“I’ll say,” They laughed.

Suddenly the radio crackled to life again, and a voice barely audible emerged from the incessant white noise.

“White rabbit calling. Anyone out there? Over.”

Max abandoned his dinner, went to the radio, and picked up the receiver. “Orange Crush calling White Rabbit. What’s your 20? Over.”

“I saw your SUV when you came in. I’m about a mile down from you on the right. Look, Crush. I’m surrounded. Over.”

“Surrounded? Explain, White Rabbit? Over.”

“Let’s dispense with the ‘overs’. My cabin is surrounded by zombies. Do you have any firepower?”

“Zombies. That's impossible. They’re all are in the city. I haven't seen a single person here in the country.”

“Not people zombies. Animal zombies.”

“Did you say animal zombies?”

“Yes. Haven't you heard?”

“No, explain.”

“If a human zombie bites an animal, the animal becomes a zombie just like the human. Some pilot, who must have been infected, crashed into the woods not far away from here. Now, my cabin is surrounded with animal zombies.”

Max and Denise couldn’t believe what they were hearing as they pondered their next move.

Suddenly, they heard the sound of footsteps on the front porch. Then the face of something dead appeared at the window and slobbered on the glass. It’s hungry eyes glared at them with fiendish intentions.

“Orange Crush. Come in. Some scientist discovered a cure for the virus and has dropped something like an acid rain on the cities that kills the zombies instantly. We need to get out of here now. If we can get to the city, we’ll be safe. It won’t be long before we can start rebuilding and have a life again. Can you reach me? You’re my last chance.”

Max and Denise heard a gut-wrenching growl behind them. Turning, they saw Powderpuff with her teeth bared, slobbering blood. Her eyes were wild with maniacal frenzy, and his hind legs ready to pounce.

Then, the front door squeaked open, and the pilot shambled toward them. Outside, the woods were alive with hundreds of ravenous mouths, screeching, hooting, and howling with one obsession on their frenzied minds. Human flesh.

After all, Max, Denise, and the hillbilly down the road, who just had his throat torn out, were the only humans for a hundred miles.

HOMICIDE MAINTENANCE

Lieutenants Alan Edgars and his partner, Jerome Bullwinkle, groaned when they heard the phone ring. They were right in the middle of devouring two Krispy Kreme glazed donuts straight from the oven with a strong, steaming cup of coffee.

Bullwinkle took the call, and after listening for a time, turned to Edgars. “Jenks says there’s a homicide at the Elite Astoria, and we’re closest to it. A woman is dead, and it's grisly. It looks like Bloody Bob’s work.”

Edgars placed the last heavenly morsel of sugar and pastry dough between his teeth and sighed, "The pleasure of eating a hot Krispy Kreme glazed donut is as close to an orgasm as anything I've ever experienced."

Bullwinkle swooned, "Right on, brother,” as he savored the last bite and chased it down with his coffee. “Drive on, Partner. Duty calls. I think I can still waddle into the elevator.”

In five minutes, they pulled the Crown Vic into the magnificent entrance of the Elite Astoria Hotel. An attendant with a flamboyant red hat opened the car door and asked, “May I be of service?”

His face darkened when Edgars showed him his badge, handed him the keys to his car, and said, “What room is the crime scene crew in?”

“They're in Room 1235.”

“We’re going to be a while.” Edgars handed him a dollar. The valet frowned and put it in his pocket.

When Edgars and Bullwinkle exited the elevators on the 12th floor, they saw a young officer in front of the open door heaving his guts out into a trashcan.

“It's pretty bad in there, huh?” Bullwinkle asked, feeling a little queasy.

“The worst,” the police officer said, and continued to heave.

When Edgars entered the room, he felt the bile rise in the back of his throat. Blood and gore covered the walls and the ceiling.

Bullwinkle said, “I’ve never seen this amount of coverage by a single body before. The perp did something peculiar to get blood splatter across a room this big. He must've dipped a brush into the blood and shook it out on the opposite side of the suite.”

Both detectives saw a sheet placed over a body in the middle of a king-size bed. One of the victim’s hands hung from the edge of the mattress. Edgars winced when he saw the perp had removed the fingernails on the exposed hand. Ugly patches of deep scarlet mottled the plush lime carpet.

Bullwinkle said, “The guy who did this is a blood junkie if I ever saw one. What was he trying to prove?”

“Who knows what a deranged maniac was thinking,” Edgars said wishing he hadn’t eaten that last donut.

Bullwinkle saw a vacuum and a bloody pail next to the sliding doors going out to the balcony. After looking at the pink and scarlet fresco design on the wall he said, “You know, Alan, I think the crazy bastard used the vacuum to suck up the blood that pooled, drained it into a bucket, and attached it to a blower.”

“What a sick fuck,” Edgars bellowed.

“I'll say.” Bullwinkle nodded.

"He also sawed off one of her hands and used it to finger-paint the bathroom,” The officer at the door shouted, and then heaved again.

“Well, that's the first time I've ever heard of that,” Edgars replied, shaking his head in disbelief.

“There's more,“ someone from the CSI group added, “The sheets are crawling with bedbugs. Apparently the perp brought a jar full with him and dumped them on the bed after he killed the woman.”

“Did we ID her yet?” Edgars asked.

The same man replied, “Yeah. She was a lawyer from Chicago. She checked in last night and was supposed to do a presentation this morning but never showed. Her company, Hodgekiss, Broadback, and Rangoon called the hotel. When she didn't answer, the desk clerk sent the housekeeper to check her room. That's when she found her.”

“I’ll bet that cleaning lady will be having nightmares for a long time,” Edgars remarked, as he walked deeper into the worst crime scene nightmare he’d ever seen.

Another police officer approached him with Thunderfoot sewn on the pocket of his uniform and added, “We called her husband in Chicago, and he's so messed up we couldn't get much out of him. So far, it's looking like a random killing. Nothing about the woman's history points to an affair. She has no enemies anyone can think of.”

“So, some nutcase caught her in the hall and forced her into the room. Did he rape her?” Edgars asked.

“No. It doesn’t appear so. It's the blood that gets him off, not the sex.”

“Are any valuables messing?”

Thunderfoot referred to a notepad and continued, “She had an expensive Omega watch, still ticking on the wrist of her severed hand. It doesn't appear to be a robbery. She had three hundred dollars in her purse.”

“Look at this room,” Edgars said to Bullwinkle as the officer joined his partner in the hall. “It’s going to require a major overhaul. The housekeeper is going to be cleaning this mess up for God knows how long. That’s if she can handle the gore. A painting contractor will have to repaint the entire suite. And they'll have to replace the carpet and hire an exterminator to remove the bedbugs.”

“You’re behind the times, Partner. The hotel would never ask one of their employees to clean up something this horrific. They’ll hire a professional cleaning service that specializes in crime scenes.”

“Who do they call? Do you know?” Edgars asked, amazed it took special people to clean up blood and gore.

“Homicide Cleaning on Sunset Boulevard. They are the premier blood and guts maintenance company. They do it all. Next week, if you come to this room, you won't know anything happened here at all.”

“What about the bedbugs? They're hard to get rid of, aren't they?”

“That's what I hear, but Homicide Cleaning does it all. They’ve been doing it for at least seven years. Before that it was a nightmare to deal with this kind of murder scene.”

Edgars wondered how his partner knew this and he didn’t. “How did you find out about them?”

“I was at a crime scene last year when you were on vacation where Bloody Bob trashed a room like this. As I recall, they charged twenty-five Gs to restore that hotel suite.”

“Twenty-five Gs? For Christ ‘s sake, where do I sign up?”

They laughed. Several of the crime scene crew looked at them oddly, obviously not appreciating any attempt at levity as one of them placed the victim’s hand in a plastic evidence bag.

When Edgars and Bullwinkle received the initial ME's report later that afternoon, it confirmed their suspicions. The woman was the fourteenth victim of Bloody Bob, whose reign of terror had lasted seven years. The Tribune had been mercilessly crucifying the police because of their failure to catch the elusive serial killer. Several of the shock jocks on the radio had a stockpile of jokes ridiculing the handling of the case by everyone involved.

Rumor had it the governor had leaned on the mayor to fire both the commissioner and the police chief twice for incompetence to take the heat off himself. During his current election campaign, he had spent 43 million dollars of his daddy’s money to get reelected for another term. Unfortunately for him, he was running behind his opponent in most districts. The scuttlebutt on the street was the governor would not be reelected for a third term if Bloody Bob remained at large on Election Day, which was only two months away.

That night when Edgars arrived at his small bungalow and went inside, he winced when he saw his fat fuck of a brother-in-law, Herbert, sprawled in his favorite recliner watching TV. He gave him the stare of death, and the bloated hulk got the message and moved to a side chair.

What an annoying bastard. Edgars thought. The moocher had been sponging off him for more than six months. He was so ugly nobody would hire him, except the local funeral home. He was a gofer there, and from time to time, he helped prepare corpses for burial and assisted in embalming and cremation.

During a commercial, Edgars thought of the obscene fees Homicide Cleaning was getting to clean up horrific crime scenes and said, “Herbert, I saw a messy crime scene today, and it reminded me of you.”

“Another cheap shot,” Herbert said sarcastically.

“No, I'm serious. How would you like to make some real money? Maybe actually have a place of your own for a change. You might even score with a few babes if you had a car and bought some decent clothes.”

“Fat chance," he groaned. “Who do I have to kill?”

“You do some nasty stuff at the funeral home. Right? Probably for peanuts. Right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell me if I'm wrong. Let's say some dude is obliterated in a head-on collision with a Mack truck.”

“We had one like that yesterday,” Herbert interrupted.

“See. What did you do when the meat wagon delivered what was left of him?”

“I cleaned him up for the burial. He was really fucked up. They couldn’t have an open casket. When the truck crushed the Kia like a matchbox, this black dude's body was shredded. He looked like he went through a meat grinder.”

“And how much did old Mr. Personality over at the Funeral Parlor pay you for cleaning him up?”

“I probably got about fifty bucks.”

“How would you like to make five-thousand dollars for two or three days work.”

“Five thousand dollars! I'd kill my own mother for that kind of money.”

“Don't let Mabel hear you say that, even if it's true. Look, Herbert. I want you and me to start a new business, but I have to be a silent partner. I don’t want anyone to know I’m involved if I’m going to solicit jobs for the business.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“No. You come in after the murderer is gone to clean up the mess he left. We'll rent a small office in a strip mall, buy some cleaning supplies, and I’ll print some business cards. We’ll need to hire a painting contractor and an exterminator to help us on some of the really horrendous crime scenes, particularly the ones where Bloody Bob gets his jollies torturing his victim.”

“I’ve done a little painting,” Herbert said timidly.

Edgars ignored this and continued, “I know some people who might hire us, particularly, other cops. Once they receive my recommendation, and I tell them my brother-in-law has gone into business, some of the officers who call Homicide Cleaning now will start calling us. At least once to try us. When they call, no one must know I’m your partner.”

“I’m no good at talking to people,” Herbert said dejectedly. “I couldn’t sell a bucket of water to a man on fire.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be dealing with the money.”

“Won’t they recognize your voice on the phone?”

“Did you ever hear my impression of John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart?”

“I don’t think so.”

Listen to this. “Now Pilgrim, understand. Anything goes wrong, anything at all… your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault… it don’t matter…I’m gonna blow your head off.”

“Nice,” Herbert said, turning away to roll his eyes. “Why would they hire a special service anyway?”

“I don’t know exactly. Apparently, normal people don’t want to get their hands bloody. Anyway, there’s a lot of money in it and very little competition. I heard the only company in town that does this kind of work charges a fortune. Sometimes as much as ten thousand dollars. If you want to be my partner, I'll give you half.”

“You will?“

“I want to be fair. Maybe if I live long enough, I can have my house back so I can watch football and fuck Mabel without you snoring in the next room. How does it sound?”

“Fantastic, Alan. It sounds too good to be true.”

“Does the sight of blood make you queasy?”

“No. Blood doesn't bother me. I could swim in it for five thousand dollars.”

“What about bodies all hacked up? Missing arms and legs? Sweeping eyeballs off the floor?”

“No problem, Alan. I see mangled corpses every week or so at Fuddruckers Funeral Home.”

“Okay. I'll have some business cards made, rent a van and a closet in some strip mall for a temporary address, and we'll be in business.”

“Great, Alan! I can't wait.”

Edgars was tired of being average. He wanted to be comfortable in his retirement, which wasn’t that many years away. He decided to call the business Homicide Maintenance. On the business card, he included the following, “When there's gore on the floor, you can snore and be sure with Homicide Maintenance. Herbert Loozer, CFO. Years of maintenance experience, funeral arrangements, exterminating, and paint contracting.”

A month later Bloody Bob struck again.

In the meantime, Edgars had posted signs about his new business at every precinct. He was particularly glad he had never introduced his brother-in-law to anyone. Herbert had always been a weird person. He had a huge nose and big ears. He always looked surprised. His eyes bulged from their sockets as if they were about to explode. Herbert was actually one of the ugliest men he’d ever seen. So much so, he was ashamed to introduce him to anyone he knew. If they had ever seen him in the flesh, they probably wouldn't give him a job.

The latest murder of a young woman occurred at another luxury hotel. It was a notch down from the Elite Astoria, but not a fleabag by any means. It was definitely upscale enough for Edgars to make a play for the cleanup job. He called everyone he could think of connected to the case and hoped for the best. He told Bullwinkle to get started with the investigation, and he would join him shortly after taking care of a few personal matters.

He was about to leave for the crime scene, when his business phone rang for the first time. Edgars answered, bubbling over with excitement, but tried not to sound that way. He hadn't hired an answering service yet, so he disguised his voice and tried to exude professionalism. “Homicide Maintenance,” he said in his most formal tone.”

“This is Jenks calling from the Precinct. There's been a murder at the Elegant Suites Hotel, and it's a bloody mess. We think Bloody Bob is up to his old tricks. The Commissioner is going to have a coronary when he finds out. Anyway, we heard from Lieutenant Alan Edgars that you do good work, and we thought we would give you a chance if you can squeeze it in. Can you give me a ballpark estimate of what you might charge?”

“You say it's really bloody?” Edgars said, applying a little John Wayne military twang in his delivery, but not too much.

“Awful. The worst I’ve ever seen.”

“Would the room need to be painted in addition to cleaned?”

“Absolutely.”

“How big is the space?”

“Oh, I’d say five hundred square feet.”

“It must be a pretty nice suite.”

“It is.”

“Last time there were bedbugs. Will you be needing exterminating services this time?”

“I don't know. The blood and the decapitation held our attention more than any bugs.”

“I want to give you a special price to show you what I can do. Let's say fifteen thousand dollars.”

“You got it,” Jenks said with a sealing-the-deal finality. ”Homicide Cleaning wanted twenty-two thousand, but they’re a bunch of cutthroats. Maybe they’ll come down on their prices now they have competition. All I can say is it better be squeaky clean when you're finished. Clean enough so I can eat off the floor. And remember, send the invoice to me for approval, not to the hotel.”

“No problem, Officer Jenks. You know our motto, ‘When there's gore on the floor, you can snore, not be poor, and still be sure with Homicide Maintenance at your door.’ When can I come out?”

“I'll put you down for tomorrow morning about 9 o'clock. The lab boys will be gone by then. You will have to work around the yellow tape.”

“No problem.”

Edgars heard a click. Damn, I wonder if Herbert can pull this off. He called him with the news.

“Herbert, we just got our first job. It’s tomorrow morning. Don't embarrass me. The rental van will be out front at 8 o’clock. Bring the cleaning supplies out to the sidewalk. Be sure to wear the uniform and the hat I bought with the Homicide Maintenance lettering on them. If anyone is at the crime scene, say as little as possible. I'll stop by about noon to see how you're doing. Any questions?

“Do you think I'll get five thousand for the cleanup?”

Edgars paused and considered this. Then he said like someone had just died, “Sorry, Herbert. I had to give our first customer a discount to get our foot in the door. This time you'll only get thirty-seven-fifty.”

“Well, That still sounds pretty good to me.”

“Do you think you can paint the rooms after you clean off the blood and gore?”

“No problem. For thirty-seven hundred and fifty dollars, I'd give a big ugly football player a blow job.”

“Please! Herbert. Don't ever let Mabel hear you say things like that. Do you know anything about plumbing?”

“I was a plumber’s helper for a while.”

“We might need a little plumbing.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

“Okay, Herbert. I'm counting on you.”

Edgars hung up, praying the knucklehead could rise to the occasion, and headed for the crime scene.

After a long hard day of puking and walking the grid of the crime scene with the forensic crew and Bullwinkle, Edgars went home and fell into bed.

About noon the next day, Edgars left his Crown Vic with the hotel valet and went to the seventh floor. He saw the crime scene tape halfway down the hall when he got off the elevator. He saw a dumpster half filled with bloody bedclothes, pieces of drywall, and a big roll of stained carpets. Several pails and paint cans lined the walls. When he reached Room 719, he smelled enamel, not the stench of blood, piss, and fecal matter.

Looking inside, he saw Herbert on a ladder applying paint on the wall with a roller. The carpet was gone, and he couldn't see a trace of blood anywhere. He did see tape on the walls where new drywall had been inserted and a layer of spackling covering the seams.

“Damn, Herbert. This place looks good. I can't believe it. You really are good at this shit.”

“I'd cut off my little finger and eat it for thirty-seven hundred and fifty dollars.”

“Christ, Herbert! Stop saying stuff like that. Someone might hear you and call in the men with the straitjackets.”

After the spackling dries and I sand it, I can go on with the painting on those walls, and I’ll be finished.” He pointed to the rough places around the room. The carpet installers will be here tomorrow morning.”

“How did you find out what carpet to order?”

“The hotel manager gave me the maker, the pattern, and how many yards were in this room. He also supplied the dumpster.”

“Do we need an exterminator?”

“No, but we need a new toilet, which I ordered.”

“What did Bloody Bob do in the bathroom to damage the toilet?”

“He tried to stuff the woman's arms down the commode and totally plugged up the pipes. Of course, he sawed them into small pieces beforehand, but he couldn't get the toilet to flush.”

“Why would he do such a crazy thing?”

“The only thing I can think of is he wanted to screw up the toilet so it would need to be replaced. Why else?”

“Did you see arms in the piping?”

“No. The CSI group cut off the pipes that were stuffed and took them with them to the lab for analysis. They removed all the body parts before I got here.”

“Are there any other problems?”

“I had to charge the new toilet and the carpet to your credit card.”

“Don’t worry. We'll straighten the money out later.”

“The hotel manager told me they're paying fifteen thousand dollars for the cleanup job. You wouldn't be trying to cheat me would you?”

“No way, bro. I had to deduct expenses from the total. You know, the toilet, the carpet, the van, renting the office. If there's more than seventy-five hundred left at the end, I'll give it to you. I’m a man of my word.”

Herbert looked at him suspiciously and returned to painting. Edgars was pissed that the hotel manager had spilled the beans about the money.

* * *

Two weeks later, Edgars received a check in the mail for seventeen thousand, five hundred dollars for the cleaning job at the crime scene. He had increased the bill for the carpet and the toilet, which he said were extras and not in his original agreement. He wrote Herbert a check for five thousand dollars to appease him.

In the interim, he rented a small office, some equipment, and a van for the new business. He couldn't wait for Bloody Bob to find a new victim. He hoped he would really bloody up the room, knock down some walls, plug up the toilet, maybe take a sledgehammer to the tub, and smash out the windows. He could see the dollar signs rising. He started thinking about getting rich. He wondered how much he could make if Bloody Bob blew up one side of the floor with C-4.

Edgars' cell rang, and he picked it up.

“Alan.” He recognized Jenks voice immediately.

“Yes. This is Alan.”

“Bloody Bob has struck again. This time on Figaroa in the strip mall between Rush and Limbaugh.”

“A strip mall? That doesn't sound like his MO. Are you sure Bloody Bob did it?”

“I'd bet my left nut it's him. And it's much worse than the last crime scene. The poor bastard he tortured and killed suffered horribly.”

“He killed a man this time?”

“He’s pretty ugly, but he looks more like a man than a woman.”

“Is there a lot of blood?”

“Wait till you see it.”

When Edgars wrote down the address, he had a weird feeling he'd seen it before. When he pulled into the parking lot and saw the storefront, he knew. It was his new office for Homicide Maintenance. The receptionist was supposed to start the following Monday. Right now, the only one operating the desk was Herbert, his brother-in-law.

Exiting the car, just as before, a sour taste of bile rose in his throat, as he approached the front door. Bullwinkle stood outside. “I hope you haven't eaten lately. If you have, take a vomit bag in there with you so you don’t contaminate the crime scene.”

“Did you find an ID?” Edgars grimaced.

“Yeah. The dead guy is Herbert Loozer of 324 Bashford Lane.”

“Christ,” Edgars exhaled.

“What is it, Alan?”

“It's my brother-in-law.”

“No. You mean me the guy we hired to clean up Bloody Bob's last bloodbath.”

“The same.”

“I wonder how Bloody Bob knew him.”

“What do you mean ‘knew him’?”

“I’d say Bob must have had a bone to pick with your brother-in-law. He really messed him up in a big way.”

“How so?”

“He brought in an industrial meat grinder.”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. He even sent us a videotape of the whole bloody thing. Bob wore black clothes, a ski mask, and never faced the camera. He worked on your brother-in-law a little bit at a time. Each time he ground off a chunk of flesh and bone, he cauterized the wound and wrapped in a bandage soaked in salt and vinegar so it would hurt like a motherfucker.”

“Poor Herbert,” Edgars winced.

“And he did one leg at a time. He was halfway up the first arm when the poor bastard died. Can you believe he worked on him for over twenty-four hours?”

Edgars felt woozy as he considered the magnitude of the inhuman torture inflicted on his brother-in-law. Who would hold a grudge against poor Herbert?

“Alan, let me handle this. I'll get Sylvester to partner with me on this one. I had no idea this was your brother-in-law.”

“I'd appreciate it. I'm not feeling too well.”

Edgars was not feeling great, but it wasn't so much Herbert's mutilated remains that bothered him. It was the realization that someone had obviously killed Herbert because he was competition for Homicide Cleaning. Was Bloody Bob somehow related to Homicide Cleaning? Was he actually killing and mutilating victims for the sole reason of getting new, obscenely expensive cleaning work? Both Bloody Bob and Homicide Cleaning had been in business for about seven years. Was this a coincidence or were they connected?

He pulled out his cell, Googled “Homicide Cleaning,” and found it located on Sunset Boulevard. He headed onto the interstate, and in fifteen minutes, he drove into another strip mall. In the middle of the tall sign of business listings, he saw “Homicide Cleaning” in blood red lettering. He parked to the left and approached the front door from that side. He checked his gun. He had the uncanny feeling he was finally going to break the case wide open. Could it really be this simple after all the years of dead ends?

When Edgars stepped inside the Homicide Cleaning lobby, a young blonde with an inviting smile greeted him. “What can I do for you today,” she said brightly.

“Is the boss in?”

She referred to a list on the desktop, and looking up with her dazzling blue eyes, said. “I don't show you as having an appointment.”

“No I don't have one. Someone recommended your company. I saw your sign and decided to stop while I was in the area. I have a chain of motels that need more than normal housecleaning services sometimes. I wanted to speak with the boss about possibly using your service.”

“Take a seat, and I'll see if he can squeeze you in.”

Edgars looked around the lobby at the twelve empty chairs, smiled, and sat down. The pretty receptionist called someone, and after putting down the phone, she said, “He'll be with you shortly.”

After a few minutes, a tall man with curly hair, a strong square chin, and dark piercing eyes met Edgars and led him to a plush office in the back. The rest of the space had cheap fixtures and looked Spartan while this man's office was tastefully decorated with expensive furniture. The nameplate on the desk read: Robert Foresight.

Edgars didn't like Foresight’s looks from the start, and judging by his sour expression, it was hate at first sight. "I understand you have a motel that periodically needs special cleaning.”

“Yes. Sometimes the clientele get a little rough with one of the whores, and things get bloody. Sometimes certain paraphernalia used in bondage damages the walls, or breaks the toilet or the tub, which calls for plumbing and painting.”

“I'm sorry, Mr…?”

“Edgars.”

The pompous ass looked as if he had just placed a lemon in his mouth when he said, "Based on what you're telling me, our service would be out of your price range. Cleaning and painting one small room might cost as much as five thousand dollars.”

“I see,” Edgars said, wanting to reach across the desk and slap the bastard. “For that kind of money, you must be sweeping out eyeballs or something worse.”

“We are. That's why we get paid the big bucks."

Edgars stood and said, "I'm sorry I wasted your valuable time."

“Don't worry. You’ll be getting a bill.”

Edgars turned to argue the point, and then, he saw the crocodile smile on the man’s cruel face. It made his blood run cold.

“Just kidding,” Foresight said with an eerie chuckle.

As Edgars turned and walked out, he felt the overpowering sensation that the man had lodged a dagger in the middle of his back.

He had just met Bloody Bob face to face. He had never been more sure of anything in his life. Possibly the governor would be reelected after all. Or maybe he should drag out the investigation to make sure he wasn't. The creep.

He wondered if Foresight knew who he really was. He'd been interviewed on TV several times regarding the murders. If he did know, he'd be coming for him soon. He thought of Mabel and the latest crime scene and cringed.

He called his partner, Bullwinkle, and told him he suspected Foresight, but left out all the reasons why.

“If this pans out,” Bullwinkle teased, “you might be the next commissioner, Alan.”

“I'm not looking for more headaches, just more money.”

That night Edgars and Bullwinkle began an around the clock surveillance of Foresight’s palatial mansion. During the day, they shadowed him everywhere he went.

As the days passed Foresight went about his daily routines and did nothing to raise their suspicions.

On the fifth night, Bullwinkle said, "You seem convinced this guy is Bloody Bob, but I don't see how you came to that conclusion.”

“It all fits, Partner. My brother-in-law competed with him, and a few days later he’s a victim, and like you said yourself, he brutalized him like no one else he’d ever killed before.”

“I hear you, but saying he’s Bloody Bob is quite a stretch, Alan. I’m sure your brother-in-law made a few enemies in his life along the way. He wasn’t a monk, was he?”

“You didn't know Herbert. He was a loner who had no friends. No one other than Bloody Bob knew he lived on this planet. His death was definitely not random. It was a direct hit, absolutely related to horning in on Bob's territory. Trust me.”

“How did we miss this for seven years?”

“I don’t know, Partner. But think about it, Bob doesn't rape his victims, and he doesn't rob them. His thing is spraying the walls with their blood, breaking up the toilets and tubs, knocking holes in the drywall. All of the premeditated damage is to land the commission to clean up the crime scene after-the-fact. There is definitely method to his madness.”

“Boy, Alan. If you’re right, I’m gonna feel guilty I was blind to his motive for all those years. I almost feel like I should refund some of my salary to the city for my incompetence in never putting two and two together.”

Bullwinkle saw the look of disbelief in Edgar’s eye at this remark, and quickly said, “Just kidding, Partner. Don’t have a relapse.”

“Foresight is Bloody Bob, and I'm going to bring him in.”

The next night, Bullwinkle was dozing behind the wheel when Edgars saw a shadowy figure emerge from behind Foresight’s mansion, creep across the side yard, then disappear into a wooded area to the right.

“Wake up, Partner. I just saw someone dressed in black wearing a ski mask come from behind Foresight’s house. There’s only one light on upstairs. We know the miserable bastard is at home and hasn’t received any guests. Something’s not right. You check on Foresight, and I’ll follow the intruder and see where he goes. I’ll bring him back for questioning if I can.”

Both detectives bolted from the car. Bullwinkle ran down the side yard with his Glock drawn. Edgars sprinted across the lawn into the woods.

When Bullwinkle reached the patio adjoining the massive pool, he took out his Maglite and washed the entire exterior wall with it. Immediately, he saw a large circular hole in one of the glass sliders and the door standing partially open. He listened for movement, heard nothing, and then slipped silently inside, illuminating the rooms with the Maglite.

The refrigerator’s icemaker dropped some cubes into the storage bin, and the detective turned quickly in the direction of the kitchen. When nothing happened, he called out, “Foresight, this is Lieutenant Bullwinkle of the LAPD. I just saw a suspicious man run from the back of your house into the woods. Are you okay?”

He heard no reply and continued trying to get a response as he headed upstairs toward the only light on in the sprawling mansion. Pointing his Glock upward toward the dim hallway, he crept silently up the staircase to the second level. He stopped to listen, heard nothing, and proceeded with his back close to the wall.

When Bullwinkle reached the room where the light was on and the door ajar, he pushed it open, and peered in. Foresight lay spread-eagled on the bed. His eyes were open, and he had a small round hole in the middle of his forehead. A pool of blood under his head had soaked into the expensive linen and mattress.

Bullwinkle withdrew his phone and called 9-1-1. This was a neat and clean murder with a handgun. He’d seen it a thousand times in his career. Well, maybe more like a hundred.

But who would want to kill Foresight, the owner of a cleaning service, unless the perp knew he was Bloody Bob and sought revenge for one of his previous heinous murders.

The problem with this scenario was no one knew Foresight was a suspect except the commissioner and the division captain, unless they told someone else. They both knew that revealing evidence was strictly against police procedure. And who would they tell who would want to commit murder?

Edgars moved as stealthily through the trees as he could, which wasn’t very stealthy. He heard the rustling of leaves, and the snapping of branches as the intruder ran a hundred feet ahead of him. Suddenly, the movement stopped abruptly.

Edgars knew the intruder was close by, probably not more than fifty feet ahead of him, but damned if he could see or hear a blessed thing. He took out his phone and took a chance on calling Bullwinkle. He hoped it wouldn't get him killed.

Bullwinkle answered, and with no introduction, said, “Foresight is dead, a clean shot through his forehead right between the eyes. Be careful, Partner.”

That's what Edgars wanted to know. He clicked off the phone without saying a word. Now he knew he wasn't tracking a burglar. He was tracking a murderer with a gun, who must be a crack shot if he drilled Foresight right between the eyes at any distance. He started to sweat but didn't move a muscle. Did the killer have a bead on him? He had moved last, therefore telegraphing his location to the perp.

Five minutes elapsed, and the woods remained deathly still. Then Edgars heard someone approaching behind him blundering through the bushes like a herd of buffalo with no apparent regard for his own safety. Who else could it be, but his partner?

Edgars peered backward into the gloom but saw nothing. The thrashing finally stopped about one hundred feet behind him to the right, and he heard a familiar voice, "Alan, are you okay?"

"Yes. I'm okay, but the killer is close. He's waiting for me to make the first move, and I'm waiting for him. Now that I’ve given him my location by trying to keep you from getting whacked, I’m a sitting duck. Thanks, Partner.”

Then the sound of more thrashing began again, moving quickly ahead of him. Edgars darted to the left, and then resumed the chase.

“Sorry, Partner," Bullwinkle shouted. “I was trying to back you up, not get you killed.”

Then Edgars saw the headlights of cars passing through the trees in the distance, and a shadowy figure rushing toward them. Apparently, the Interstate must be close by and the perp was making a run for it. Edgars fired two quick shots in the direction of the killer as Bullwinkle narrowed the distance behind him.

Suddenly Edgars saw muzzle flashes and heard the roar of a machine gun and bullets flying in a line across the landscape. He felt a jolt in his shoulder that knocked him off his feet. He heard Bullwinkle let out a yelp of pain behind him.

Edgars lay barely conscious, feeling the blood soaking into his Brooks Brothers suit he knew was ruined. Then, it occurred to him to use his cell to call 9-1-1 for help. He saw the headlights of a car come on and drive toward the highway, fishtail onto it, and speed away. Just before he passed out, he saw the beam of a flashlight in his face and heard Bullwinkle say, “You're hurt bad, Partner, but I think you'll make it if the EMTs can find the signal on our phones in time.”

* * *

Two days later, Edgars awoke in a hospital bed for the first time. Tubes hung all around him on various stands. Bullwinkle sat in the chair browsing through a copy of Hustler. “Hey, Partner,” Edgars gasped, “I see you're feeding your mind with compelling articles.”

“Exactly,” Bullwinkle mused. “I buy this magazine for the enthralling essays. I never look at the pictures of babes with bodacious boobs.”

“Of course not,” Edgars winced in pain.

“Well, I've got a lot to tell you. First, you're going to be as good as new in a month or two. You’ll still be able to jack off with your right hand, and I bought you this magazine so you could start practicing whenever the mood strikes you.”

“Very thoughtful, Partner.”

“You were right. Foresight was Bloody Bob. We found enough incriminating evidence in the basement to hang him three times over. He had a box full of trophies he took off his victims, too. He wasn’t a very smart serial killer. It hurts me to say this since it took us seven years to catch him.”

“How about you, Partner? I thought I heard you yelp when the bullets were flying.”

“Yeah, I got a flesh wound in my right love-handle, but I'm fine. Oh, your Brooks Brothers suit is ruined, but at least, you're still alive. I got something for you.”

“What?”

Bullwinkle pulled out a box full of Krispy Kreme donuts from behind the chair. Edgars grabbed his shoulder, and couldn't help but chuckle a little. He quickly said, "Don't make me laugh. It hurts like a son-of-a-bitch. Do we have any leads on who killed Foresight and almost killed me?”

“We have more than a lead, but nothing that would stand up in court or ever come to trial. The evidence points to one slimy bastard who definitely had a motive.”

“I already know who it is,” Edgar said trying to raise the mattress into more of a sitting position. “We told the commissioner and the division captain we suspected Foresight. I don't see either one of them committing the murder.”

“So who else could it be?” Bullwinkle did a little dance next to the bed. “I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.”

“When Governor Clifford called at the eleventh hour the day before the election to see what progress had been made in nabbing Bloody Bob, the commissioner squealed that we suspected Foresight was so the governor would owe him one.”

“What day is it?”

“Friday, November 5.”

“The gubernatorial election is over, and let me guess, crafty Claude Clifford was reelected.”

“By a landslide after he announced in one of his promotional ads the end of Bloody Bob’s reign of terror, and the authorities found irrefutable evidence at his home. The opposing candidate didn't stand a chance against him.”

“And I doubt those ass-kissing bastards, the commissioner and his lackey, the division captain, will squeal that the governor is the murderer.”

“Not a chance. Everybody's happy Bloody Bob is dead. Whoever killed him deserves a medal, not the chair.”

“That slimy son-of-a-bitch, crafty Claude Clifford landed on his feet again.”

“Do you expect any less from a politician?”

“Well, I have to say,” Edgars said ruefully. “I have more respect for him now than I ever did. He had to do more than spend forty-three million of his daddy's money to get elected. He definitely got his hands dirty this time, and he even risked his life. I took a couple of shots at him.”

“Do you think we’ll ever be able to prove he did it?”

“We don't have a snowball’s chance in hell,” Edgars winced straightening his pillow.

“Are you going to continue with Homicide Maintenance?”

“What do you mean me continue it. It was my brother-in-law’s business.”

“I wasn't born yesterday, Alan. Jenks and I laughed like hell, almost busted a gut, listening to your John Wayne impersonation when we called to give you the job. You didn't fool us for a second. Rich Little, you ain’t.”

“Now that Bloody Bob is dead, there may not be any need for the special cleaning business anymore. I think I'd like to be commissioner when that ass-kissing Clyde Clapper retires next year.”

“You’d have a better shot at taking a spaceship to Mars.”

“I don't know.” Edgars smiled slyly. “I think the governor might be receptive to my appointment. After all, I have the Bloody Bob ace up my sleeve, and he owes me for blowing out my shoulder.”

“What do I get not to blow the whistle?”

“How would you like to be division captain?”

Scary Stories:

A Collection of Horror

Volume 4

Chamber Of Horror Series

By

Billy Wells

Scary Stories: A Collection of Horror

Volume 4

Chamber of Horror Series

Copyright © 2014 by Billy Wells

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to Christopher Wells, my son, who at least makes me believe he never tires of listening to me babble about my horror stories.

.

CRAWLSPACE

Alex and Mia, two young reporters from The Daily Chronicle, peered at the black foreboding structure through the trees the townsfolk called Hell House. Alex had parked his Toyota at the entrance to the town cemetery, which bordered the property and provided an adequate view. Gnarled leafless trees surrounded the black clapboard frame house only a stone’s throw from a hillside of broken tombstones dating back to 1651. The gray overcast sky and the chill in the air added to the somber, disquieting feeling Mia felt in her bones just looking at the structure.

This past April, a secretive, humpbacked man the neighborhood kids had nicknamed ‘Creepy’ had purchased this house and moved in. He had become the “Boo Radley” of Black Falls.

Mia heard Joyce Haines, the mysterious recluse’s closest neighbor, had snapped a picture of him driving by in his dilapidated black hearse the day he arrived and posted it on Facebook. No one had seen him since.

His ominous residence was scary and intimidating just like the reputation of the creepy eccentric owner himself. That’s why Mia had urged Alex to come with her. He was adamantly opposed to the idea, but agreed to accompany her grudgingly even after she wouldn’t let him feel her boobs.

Mia knew this could be just another wild goose chase like so many others, but she was hopeful and driven. Something in her gut told her there was a compelling story here.

She peered at the substantial, weather-beaten structure through binoculars. “The windows are so dirty, it's like a second layer of curtains, but I believe I see a light inside,” she said, sitting on the passenger side of Alex’s Toyota Sienna.

“Let’s forget this,” Alex groused. “It's not right to bother the old man. He’s obviously doesn’t want to know his neighbors. We should leave him alone.”

“Alex, we need one more article for The Chronicle. It goes to press tomorrow night. A piece about this weirdo and the infamous Hell House will be a perfect story to fill the gap.

Mia had discovered in her preliminary research the house had a malevolent history of death and dismemberment precipitated by a mad doctor named Angus Gloom. Neighbors located a quarter of a mile away had reported recurring nocturnal screams from the residence to the authorities during the summer of 1989. A search warrant and the consequent inspection of the property revealed Dr. Gloom had performed ghastly experiments on homeless people over a forty-year period. Skeletons chained to various torture devices and operating tables told the grisly story the prosecution believed would have yielded thirty-nine consecutive life sentences. The public outrage ended when Gloom hanged himself in his cell awaiting trial.

The records at the town hall indicated Gloom’s son, Barnabas, inherited the property. But, due to the scandal surrounding it, he let it fall into ruin for many years until the mysterious recluse with the black hearse had taken ownership this year.

Creepy had been the talk of the town for over a month after he moved in, but of late, the gossip had died away. Now, there was only an occasional prank of a teenager creeping up on his porch and ringing the doorbell after dark. Even then, the recluse never answered the door.

“I don’t know why you wanted to drive out here when you know no one has seen the creep since the day he arrived,” Alex bellyached.

“This is the only lead we have on a story to meet tomorrow’s deadline,” Mia explained.

“The old codger may have died in this old house for all we know. He’s old. And you know from the kid’s pranks he won’t answer the door.”

“We'll see.”

Alex almost dropped his teeth when Mia got out of the car, threaded her way through the trees to the front door, and rang the doorbell.

When no one answered after several minutes elapsed, she rang it again.

In the meantime, Alex had gathered his courage, particularly since he assumed the old man would not open the door anyway. He exited the car and joined Mia at the front door.

When he planted his feet alongside hers and joined in her waiting, Mia said curtly, “Well, Alex. You should forget about a career as a reporter. You don't have the constitution for it, or should I say, the balls.”

“That's not it at all. I don't want to harass the old man who obviously doesn't want to be bothered.”

“Really. The way your lip is quivering I’d say you don’t like knocking on doors of a house where people were slaughtered next to a graveyard.”

Alex fumed at the remark, but couldn’t deny it.

They had waited an inordinate amount of time and were about to give up and return to the car when the door creaked open. Alex almost browned his shorts.

“What do you want?” the eerie voice inside the door rasped.

“We're reporters from The Daily Chronicle. I‘m Mia Phillips and this is Alex Post. You are the newest member of our community, and we would like to include you in this month’s Get To Know Your Neighbor section of the paper. Do you have a few minutes you could spare to tell us a little about yourself?”

After a long silence, the door opened wider. Almost in a whisper, the voice said, "Come in.” The invitation reminded Alex of Bela Lugosi as Dracula inviting the realtor into his castle in Transylvania.

They followed the creepy little man into the foul-smelling gloom. From the foyer, he led them into a small room lit only by one flickering candle in a candelabra for eight. “Have a seat anywhere,” the humpback wheezed.

With only one candle burning, the room painted black, and two barely visible ebony sofas facing each other, the reporters had to feel for a place to sit. Finally, Alex disappeared into the darkness to the left close to the entry door. Mia plopped down on something leathery across from the grizzled old man.

As Mia peered at the two gaps in the upper row of his yellow teeth, she decided the nickname, Creepy, suited the old man perfectly. In addition to his grotesque deformity, he was cross-eyed and had a baldhead with ugly sores oozing pus. He also walked with a silver-tipped cane and dragged his left foot behind him.

Mia settled herself in the blackness, and rifling her purse for a pen to take shorthand, she said to the ugly man cloaked in shadow, “I'm sorry, sir, but could you turn on the light? I need to jot down a few notes during the interview, and the candlelight is rather dim.”

“I'm truly sorry, Miss,” he croaked. “I don't have the electricity turned on yet.”

The guttering flame of the lone candle casting weird irregular shadows on her steno pad made her heart beat faster.

She took a deep breath. “Let's start with your name.”

“My name is Vladimir Frankenstein,” the doctor replied with almost a lisp.

“Vladimir… Frankenstein,” Mia repeated eerily. “The same as the surname of the fictional character in Mary Shelley's book?”

“The same. It was my mother's favorite novel all her life. It was actually a great love story.”

“But Frankenstein…is that your real name?”

“I come from a long line of Frankensteins long before Mary Shelley was even born.”

“Really. How fascinating. And what did you do for a living before you retired and moved to Black Falls?”

“Oh, I haven't retired. I'm still doing research, the same as I have since I was a young man.”

Mia pondered his reply. “What kind of research, may I ask?”

“Genetic research, cloning, organ replacements…. Some reanimation.”

Mia’s face creased with misgiving. “Mr. Frankenstein, I….”

“Please. Dr. Frankenstein. I must insist,” he said emphatically.

“Sorry. I came here to write an authentic article of your life for my readers. I don't think you’re taking my interview seriously.”

The doctor twisted his grossly deformed shape closer into her space and sniggered. “Oh, but I am, I assure you. My work is a bit out of the ordinary, but everything I've told you is accurate.”

“You’re actually experimenting with organ replacements and reanimation much like the Dr. Frankenstein in Shelley’s classic novel?”

“Absolutely. Possibly her book and my mothers love of it inspired me to pursue these things as a career.”

“I would think not having electricity would be a serious hindrance in your experiments,” Mia said skeptically.

“Reanimation needs lightning not manmade electricity, and I work in the morning when the sun bathes the kitchen with more than adequate light. In a pinch, I also have a generator with a crank I can fire up if I need it.”

They heard a sudden burst of wailing and moaning from underneath the floor.

“What is that, Dr. Frankenstein?”

“Those are some of the…” he paused, “lab animals whining for attention. It's getting close to feeding time.”

“I didn't realize you have a basement. This house must be larger that it appears from the outside.”

“Actually, it’s quite substantial. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a basement, but there is a lovely crawlspace.”

Mia felt the fear building inside her. She was glad Alex had come with her even though she was probably more of a fighter than he was. She hoped there would be safety in numbers. “And you keep your lab animals down there?”

“Well, to be completely frank, only the rejects from my failed experiments are down there. You know what they always say, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’” Frankenstein giggled, and Mia turned away from him in disgust, reeling from what she took as another distasteful attempt at humor. How could anyone take such a remark seriously?

It was then Mia perceived something mounted on the wall behind the doctor she hadn’t noticed before. In the subdued light, it appeared to be the head of some kind of exotic animal, but she couldn’t identify it. She looked further along the wall, and in the far corner closer to the light; she could see a second mounted head more clearly. It had hair and horns like a buffalo, yet again, it wasn’t an animal she had ever seen before.

Mia gathered her composure and her nerve to continue. Was she interviewing a doctor with a warped sense of humor or a raving lunatic? She asked innocently, “If the rejects are in the crawlspace, where do you keep the lab animals for your current projects?”

“Miss, I assure you my finances do not allow me the luxury of an inventory of live specimens. Each week, a discreet man leaves what I need on the loading dock behind the house at three o’clock in the morning. I choose to avoid the prying eyes of my neighbors.”

They heard another agonized wail from below.

Mia muttered nervously. “It sounds like you have quite a few rejects down there.”

“I do, but I haven’t added many. Most of them were here when I bought the house.”

“You don’t know how many there are?”

“No. It would be suicide to try and count them.”

Mia decided to ignore the doctor’s remark. She was afraid of where it might lead. She wondered why Alex remained so silent. Was he so scared shitless he was speechless? She wanted to ask, but didn’t want to embarrass him if he had indeed shit himself like he had once before when a dog chased them.

Mia continued the interview; “You say you conduct most of your research in the kitchen in the morning?”

“I’m afraid so. It’s all I have now that my finances have dwindled, and I no longer have my castle. I never thought I’d be able to continue my work, but the owner of the house almost gave it away. When I saw how dilapidated it was, I almost decided not to buy. The crawlspace and its occupants intrigued me. They were actually the decisive selling point that caused me to change my mind.”

“Can you give me an example of one of your projects?”

“My last experiment was impregnating a female Doberman with the sperm of a polar bear. Both of the original species were capable of extreme violence and uncanny stamina. But, by combining them, I created a creature of staggering ferocity.”

Mia tried to visualize the monstrosity and returned her gaze to the first mount she’s seen on the wall. Could that be a cross between a Doberman and a polar bear?

Turning back to the doctor shrouded in shadow, she remarked, “I hate to say it, but your research sounds more like The Island of Dr. Moreau than Shelley's Frankenstein.”

“When H. G. Wells wrote that story, the public was appalled at such a concept, but now everyone except a hayseed with his head in the sand realizes how possible such genetic couplings can be. I look forward to the day I can join humans with something as deadly as a praying mantis or a black widow spider.”

Finding this last preposterous statement too depraved to ignore any longer, Mia could hardly breathe from the sudden crippling terror she could no longer deny. Frankenstein was clearly not a comedian; he was raving, psychotic lunatic. She knew now it was way past time to leave. It had been hard to see the doctor clearly during the interview, but now he had disappeared completely into the black interior.

Searching for the doctor in the gloom, Mia perceived a dark shape suspended from the ceiling like a piñata with one big eye in the middle of its forehead in the darkest corner of the room. A stab of unbridled horror all but paralyzed her when the eyeball winked at her and stuck out its tongue.

She didn’t recognize her own voice when she stammered, “Alex, Wake up. I think we've taken up as much of Dr. Frankenstein’s time as we should for one day. I have enough material for a fantastic article.”

Mia arose from whatever she’d sat on and looked in the direction where Alex had gone when they arrived. She waited for a reply but he didn't respond. “Alex, where are you. It's time to leave.”

“I'm sorry, Miss,” Frankenstein sniggered. “Your friend sat on the chair where a family of black widows made their web. One of them probably bit him for sitting on some of her eggs. He's probably in anaphylactic shock from the poison and can’t move a muscle.”

Mia heard more unnerving moans and shrieks from below. To make matters worse, she heard the rumble of thunder, and the crack of lightning.

Frankenstein croaked jubilantly, “My pets heard your voice, and they are agitated with excitement. It's been such a long time since they feasted on something alive.” His hideous laugh made her skin crawl.

Mia made a run for the front door, but stumbled over Alex’s body lying prostrate on the floor. Before she could regain her feet, Dr. Frankenstein had stuck her in the neck with a syringe, and she slumped into a pile alongside Alex.

Frankenstein unbolted the trapdoor and lifted the lid. The stench of both the dead and the living human and animal beings wallowing in the filth below would have gagged a buzzard, but to him, it was the sweet smell of genetic engineering.

The doctor grabbed one of Alex’s legs, dragged him to the trapdoor, and opening it, pushed him over the side.

Sounds of bones breaking, chewing, and flesh tearing were barely audible under the agonized screams of the male reporter.

Even Frankenstein cringed at the horror taking place in the crawlspace. Many of the pitiful beings below were born horribly deformed in Dr. Gloom’s laboratory and had never seen the light of day.

* * *

The next morning, Mia awoke spread-eagled on a makeshift operating table in the kitchen. The curtains were pulled back, and the sun was blinding as it washed her naked body with dazzling clarity.

“Please, Dr. Frankenstein or whatever your name is, I beg you. Let me go. Please. I’m a human being. Not one of your lab rats. We told the newspaper where Alex and I were going when we left. They'll be sending someone to check on us when we don’t return.”

“Good, it’s not often I have visitors. But they are already too late to save your friend. The things in the crawlspace were ravenous. They have already devoured him. And after I inject you with my latest serum, you'll wish you had never been born.” He giggled uncontrollably, snot spurting in green clumps from his nostrils.

“Why are you doing this? Is it for some military purpose? Or is this some philanthropic crusade to save humanity from the impending doom of Ebola? Are you giving your life and sacrificing the lives of others to find the cure for cancer?”

“I could lie and say I did it all for truth, beauty, and the American dream, but to be frank, Miss, my motives are purely for my own selfish gratification. I simply get my rocks off making monsters. It’s that simple. Sorry your death and dismemberment couldn’t be for a more altruistic reason. I guess I’m just a lowlife asshole, who enjoys torturing people, particularly people with boobs as large as yours. That’s why I answered the door when you rang the bell.”

Mia struggled desperately to free herself, and lifting her head, she saw three enclosures in front of the kitchen window. One had nests of praying mantises inside; the second, webs of enormous black spiders; and the third, a wooly dwarf with an oversized skull strapped to a table.

Mia watched the doctor stick a syringe into a vial of liquid from the mantis enclosure, fill the test-tube with it, and then shoot the mixture into a vein in the cave dwarf’s right arm. Then, he extracted a syringe of liquid from the spider enclosure and shot a tubeful into the dwarf's left arm. The cave dwarf writhed in pain; his face contorted in agony.

Mia swooned and lapsed into unconsciousness at the horror of the dwarf’s transformation taking place before her eyes.

* * *

The next morning, Mia awoke still strapped to the table. When she opened her eyes, the sun blinded her. She felt something furry pinch her nipple.

Then, she screamed as the cave dwarf with spidery arms and mantis teeth crawled up on the table and mounted her.

NO REST FOR THE DEAD

Mort Spade popped the top on a Rolling Rock and pushed a button on the remote for his TV. He checked the guide and saw the movie, The Body Snatcher, had just started on TNT.

He hated to watch commercials, but he loved horror flicks so he pushed the channel button and saw the opening credits scrolling up on the screen.

“Fuck,” he said, pitching the remote on the sofa. “Black and white.” He wished the movie was in color but decided to watch it anyway.

As he watched Cabman John Gray, played by Boris Karloff, digging up fresh corpses and selling them to a Dr. MacFarlane for what at the time must've been big bucks, Mort had a brainstorm. Why couldn't he do the same thing Gray was doing? He’d been a maintenance man at the Morningside Cemetery for over ten years, and he was making peanuts. Digging graves, mostly with a backhoe, was his primary job, along with moving dead people from various locations to the funeral home or the cemetery.

During the movie, Gray had a great business going with his horse and carriage, and Mort wanted to give it a try himself. The problem was finding someone who wanted to buy cadavers like Dr. MacFarlane in the movie.

When the movie ended, Mort went to his computer and booted up. After an interminable time, he saw the Microsoft network finally fill the screen. He googled Craigslist and put “funeral arrangements” in the search engine. A list of undertakers and research facilities came up. One stood out from the rest with the catchy slogan, “A body is a terrible thing to waste.” He hit the link and was taken to a site with a large picture of a group of smiling doctors standing in front of an impressive medical building. They held a banner that read, ”Help Save A Child And Dispense With Enormous Funeral Costs. Donate Your Body To Medical Research.”

Wow. Maybe this would be the perfect place to sell a cadaver.

He read every word on the page. These doctors were soliciting elderly people who didn't have the money for a customary funeral to agree to donate their bodies to science upon their death.

Mort didn't know if these doctors would pay him for a body already embalmed or not, but what did he have to lose by asking. He called the number listed in the ad.

A female answered, “Edmunds Medical Research.”

“Hello,” Mort said. “I'd like to speak with someone about donating a body.”

“Just a second, let me transfer you to Mr. Sharlaton.”

Mort listened to the phone ringing, and on the third ring, he heard, “Mr. Sharlaton here. May I help you?”

“Uhh,” Mort said, and suddenly realized he couldn’t find the words to put a sentence together.

“Is someone on the line?” Sharlaton asked impatiently.

“Yes. I don't know how to begin exactly,” Mort stammered nervously.

“May I ask with whom I am speaking?”

“Well,” Mort hesitated. “Actually I would like to remain anonymous.”

“I'm sorry, sir, but I already know you’re calling from the Mort Spade listing. Your name is already visible on caller ID. Are you Mort?”

“Well, yes, but what I want to ask must remain strictly confidential.”

“I understand, Mort. Many of our calls begin this way. Death of a loved one is always a ticklish matter to discuss. What do you want to know?”

“Let's say I know someone who is very sick and will probably kick... I mean pass away soon. The person’s spouse, who is responsible for paying for the funeral, has no money, but does have complete control of what happens to the body once the spouse dies. Could I...I mean my friend, donate the body to your organization without the deceased signed permission?”

“Yes. It happens all the time. All you... I mean your friend, has to do is have the loved one sign a waiver stating your friend will be solely responsible for the disposition of his or her body in the event of death. I can even fax you a copy of the form they need to sign if you like.”

Mort’s face beamed with excitement. "Let's say I place an ad like you did on Craigslist to solicit people, who will agree to use your service, and I supply you with their names. Do you have, what d'you call it ...an affiliate agreement arrangement? You know… would you pay a finders fee for every person I can get to donate their body?”

“Actually, yes,” Sharlaton replied cheerfully. “We already have several affiliates who receive finders fees for body donations.”

“Really. And how much do you pay for each corpse…I mean dearly departed?”

“Two thousand dollars is our standard fee for a deceased who expired in less than twelve hours, and one thousand for one between twelve and twenty-four hours.”

Mort could barely form his next sentence; the grin on his face was so wide. “I guess this is a crazy question, but I'll ask it anyway. Let's say the deceased is embalmed and goes through the memorial service process, but rather than a burial or cremation, they elect to donate their body to your organization after the ceremony.”

“Cadavers already embalmed are less desirable for our primary research, but we do have other uses for such bodies with universities and medical training establishments. But, we only pay five hundred dollars for those cadavers.”

“If I find a donor, are you the person I should speak with to receive my payment?”

“Yes. Since I spoke with you initially, I will be your contact for all future dealings with our company.”

* * *

The next Wednesday, Mort excavated a grave for a newly departed and closed it after the funeral. The man had died of a heart attack at the age of forty-two. He wondered if the cadaver being young would increase his payment for the donation.

That night, at three in the morning, Mort drove the backhoe to the fresh grave. There was little chance anyone would hear the machine digging since it was deep in the new section of the cemetery far from the main road. Still, the work was nerve-racking since the roar of the engine was loud enough to drown out the sound of a tank if it approached during the excavation.

Knowing he would be exhuming the body in only a few hours, Mort dispensed with placing the top on the concrete vault. He simply covered the hole with dirt as fast as he could without anyone seeing. He wasn’t used to digging up bodies only burying them, and he’d never excavated a grave at night. Even with the headlight of the backhoe blazing, the shadows of the machine’s arm rising and lowering cast eerie shadows on the gravesite that unnerved him more and more, as the exhumation progressed.

Then, the bucket finally reached the coffin on one of its downward spirals and split the mahogany top. Mort didn’t hear the loud crack of the impact and the wood splintering for the roar of the engine but he felt the vibration. He cringed at the thought of the bucket crashing through the top and squashing the body as flat as a pancake. He quickly turned off the engine to inspect the damage.

He jumped into the hole, and straddling the edges of the concrete vault, began removing the excess dirt so he could lift the lid of the coffin and drag out the body. He wasn’t looking forward to handling the corpse, but the mechanical coffin lowering device only went down, not up. Consequently, the body would have to be physically removed from the coffin just like Boris had done in the movie.

Mort winced when he saw the huge crack and the long gash in the mahogany top and the scrapes along the sides where his shovel had raked across it. Finally, he lifted the lid and exposed the body of the corpse within. He chuckled when he remembered Joseph Stiff was his real name.

Stiff had a spray of dirt that had seeped through the jagged crack on his face and on his black suit and red tie. An ugly bloodworm that had also fallen inside had crawled into the corpse’s right nostril and was trying to make a home there. Mort plucked it off and flicked it away like a big booger. The next obstacle was getting the body out of the coffin and into his truck without messing it up too badly.

Mort was beginning to wonder whether he had misjudged how hard it would be to make five hundred dollars grave robbing. He loved earning two weeks pay for a single night’s work, but it was ball-busting labor for one man. He wished Fuzzy, his fellow gravedigger friend, could help, but he was afraid to ask him for fear he would blow the whistle.

Mort walked back to his truck in the parking lot and backed it up to the edge of the grave. Next, he took some blankets from behind his seat, opened the tailgate, and spread two of them in the truck bed and on the ground just above the corpse’s head. He straddled the corner of the vault, and reaching down and placing his hands under Stiff’s arms, he dragged him on to the blanket. Catching his breath, he lifted him like a giant sack of potatoes into the truck bed, covered him with another blanket, and closed the tailgate.

Huffing and puffing, he collapsed on the ground next to his truck and thought about the joy of getting back to his place to crack open a cold Rolling Rock.

After a rest, Mort returned to the backhoe, pushed in the pile of dirt he had removed, and smoothed it over so it looked about the same as the grave had when he started.

After returning the backhoe to its assigned parking space in the cemetery lot, he went back to his truck and drove to Edmunds Medical Research. By the time he arrived, the sun was beginning to rise.

When he pulled into the large parking lot, and he saw a loading dock and assumed it must be the place where people disposed of the bodies and got paid. The interior was dark, and no one was moving about inside at this early hour. He waited.

At seven-fifty, a car pulled into the lot and parked. A young man got out, and after unlocking the door next to the receiving window, he went inside and turned on the light.

At eight o'clock, Mort saw the door to the loading dock go up. He drove alongside of the receiving window so he’d be first in line. The man inside was talking on the phone.

Mort waited for the young man to hang up and talk to him, and finally, he noticed Mort and said, “Good morning. May I help you?”

“I‘m making a delivery. This is my first time, and I’m not entirely familiar with the process. Do I give the purchase order to you?”

A slot opened in the window and a receiving box opened. “Place the P.O. inside, sir. Let me take a look.”

Mort complied. The man smiled when he looked at the purchase order and said, trying not to laugh, "This is a loading dock for supplies… things like equipment, paper goods, drugs. We don't accept cadavers here.”

“I'm sorry. Like I said this is my first delivery. Where is the proper place to deliver a cadaver?”

“Usually, our drivers pick up the body of the deceased at their residence, the hospital, or the morgue and take it to the arranged drop off point. I don’t remember anyone making a personal delivery from a truck. Do you have the name of a contact I can call?”

“Yes,” Mort said nervously. “Mr. Sharlaton. Call him. He's the one I spoke to about the arrangements.”

The clerk picked up a phone and called the name he’d been given. Mort saw the man's lips moving but didn't hear what he said.

Finally, the voice returned over the loudspeaker, “Pull to the side over there next to the trash cans. Someone will be here shortly.”

Mort hoped his failure to follow the correct procedure would not threaten his relationship with the facility before it had even begun. He saw a black van approaching from around the corner of the building. It pulled alongside his truck. Two surly men who looked like Stallone and Schwarzenegger in their prime, strong enough to rip his arms off, got out of the van and approached him.

The first one with a large spider tattoo on his left cheek bellowed, “Where's the stiff?”

“He's in the truck bed,” Mort replied, mesmerized by the man’s bulging biceps.

“I’m Sydney. Do you have a purchase order?” he barked.

Mort handed him the form and asked, “How do I get my money?”

“Would you prefer $450 cash now or a check in two weeks?”

“I'll take the cash now,” Mort said with no hesitation. “This is my first delivery. Did I fill out the form correctly?”

Sydney glanced at it and said, “Looks good to me.”

“Will I receive a 1099 for the money I receive?”

“A what?”

“You know, a tax form reporting the money you paid me during the year.”

“Do you want one?” Sydney said skeptically.

“Well, not really. But I'll do whatever you and Mr. Sharlaton want.”

“Do you plan to bring in more stiffs or is this the only one?”

“I hope there’ll be more, but I don't know for sure.”

Sydney handed Mort a business card through the window. “If you come again, call the number on this card an hour before you plan to deliver, and either me or my brother, Sherwood, will meet you at the back of the parking lot to pick up the stiff.”

Mort couldn't believe what he was hearing. He hoped he wouldn't go to jail. This sounded too good to be true.

Sydney and Sherwood, who had tattoos over most of their visible skin, pulled back the blanket covering Andrew Stiff and scrutinized him. They seemed pleased. Afterward, they transferred the body into the back of their black van.

Mort wondered if they would pay him or stiff him. Sherwood came to the driver’s side window and gave him an envelope containing $450 cash. After he watched the van drive away and disappear over the crest of a hill, Mort drove to his apartment and knocked down a six-pack of Rolling Rock. He felt like he was riding on top of the world.

Over the next year, Mort delivered twenty-five cadavers to the Edmunds facility and received $450 for each one. Each week, he religiously placed an ad on Craigslist and in the local newspaper, soliciting people, who wanted to donate their body to science.

Mort was working much harder than he ever had and his effort was paying off. His bank account was growing steadily. Life was good as long as no one tried to exhume one of the corpses he’d dug up and sold to science. Occasionally, Mort received email agreements for body donations, but most of the corpses still came from cadavers he dug up the night after he buried them.

* * *

Finally, one night after struggling with a particularly obese body, Mort did not feel well. In spite of the chills and fever he’d been experiencing for several days, he drove to the Edmunds’ parking lot to deliver the rotund cadaver to Sydney and Sherwood as he usually did. After this delivery, Mort had already decided he would take a well-earned two-week vacation and rest up before he killed himself working too hard to get rich.

When Sydney and Sherwood arrived in their black van after receiving Mort’s call, they pulled alongside his truck and found him slumped over the steering wheel. They piled out of the van, and after opening the truck door, Sherwood felt for a pulse. He couldn't detect one.

The brothers removed Mort’s lifeless body from the truck, laid him out on the pavement, and took turns pounding on his chest for five minutes without a response. They had grown to like the gangly old codger and were genuinely sad he had apparently had a heart attack and died. After a few more moments of heartfelt bereavement, they loaded Mort’s body into the van with the cadaver he’d brought for them and delivered both bodies to the Edmunds facility. They received twenty-five hundred dollars for their trouble. It went a long way toward relieving their momentary pangs of remorse.

Later that morning, the facility shipped the embalmed cadaver Mort had brought with him in the truck to a university for dissection by medical students. Since Mort had not been embalmed, Sydney and Sherwood delivered him to the National Highway Safety Administration. The brothers heard they used cadavers as test dummies to study the frame-by-frame carnage of a body involved in a head-on collision.

As soon as Mort’s body arrived at the test site, two men in black sweat suits removed him from the van and strapped him into a Kia compact. In this particular experiment, the small car was scheduled to have a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer loaded with concrete stanchions used in the construction of highway bridges.

The brothers hadn’t had breakfast, and feeling hungry, they stopped just down the road at Krispie Kreme for some donuts and coffee.

Sitting outside at a table munching on the sugary delights, the brothers had an unobstructed view of the test site. As they listened to the roar of the bellowing mufflers and smelled the acrid fumes of the diesel exhaust, they were comforted they had left strict instructions in their wallets, their vehicles, and their living wills their bodies would not be donated to medical science under any circumstances.

“Poor old Mort, I'm going to miss him,” Sidney said mournfully. “He was the best good old boy we ever did business with.”

Sherwood grinned, "And he was stupid enough to give us a 10% commission on every stiff."

"That, too.” Sydney sighed and sipped the steaming hot coffee. “I'd put a flower on his grave if he had one, but after the eighteen-wheeler pulverizes his body, they’ll haul what’s left to the land fill.”

“Well, would you rather have NASA test its landing systems with his corpse? He'd be burned to a crisp upon impact after a teeth-rattling trip into outer space.”

“Yeah, but not all the landings are bad. NASA isn’t that incompetent. I'm sure he'd have a 50-50 chance to come down in one piece.”

“Sydney, it's a no win situation. If he wasn’t incinerated the first time, they’d probably keep shooting his corpse into space until he was.”

“I don't think so. The corpse would be all dried out by that time. They wouldn't send it up more than once.”

“No matter what you say, Mort is lucky. The National Highway Safety Administration is the best way to go. Boom! You're obliterated in one quick ball busting collision. Better that than be bloating and wasting away in the sun for months to better inform law-enforcement about decomposition.”

“You're right, Sherwood. That would be the last way I'd want to go.”

“I understand some university science departments let the military use cadavers donated to them to test landmine resistant footwear.”

“If the people who donate their bodies to science only knew what the universities, the military, and the government agencies actually do with them, we'd have to find another job.”

Sydney chuckled to himself and then said, "I saw an article in Reader's Digest that said in the old days when a corpse wasn't embalmed, sometimes they put a bell outside the grave with a pull-chain leading inside the coffin. If the dead guy was just temporarily out of it and woke up after being buried alive, he could ring the bell for help.”

“Fuck. Can you imagine if Mort wasn't really dead and he woke up strapped into the seat with the tractor-trailer loaded with concrete barreling down on him?”

A loud beeping sound from inside the Kia compact awakened Mort from his temporary, catatonic stupor. He'd had this malady several times before in this life. It was always annoying to wake up in a strange place with a bunch of strangers gawking at you. But, it was funny to see their faces when you opened your eyes and got up after they thought you were dead.

This time he decided to really give these clowns a scare. He screamed "Boo!" and tried to jump up abruptly to scare the living shit out of whoever was around him. But to his dismay and utter shock, he found himself strapped in a seat, unable to move his limbs. He opened his bleary eyes and tried to focus.

The last thing Mort saw before he was squashed like a grape run over by a steamroller was the dazzling chrome ornament of a big-busted woman with a fifteen-inch waist affixed to the hood of a cherry red tractor-trailer.

JUMPER

Josh Kramer saw the young man peering into the dark water under the bridge. It was almost midnight. Way past time for a casual stroll. The man had a troubled, lost soul kind of look, and he was so committed to the murky depths thirty feet below, he hadn't noticed Josh walking toward him on the bridge.

Josh was a cop, and he came here several times a night to check if there were people on the bridge contemplating suicide. He walked this beat five nights a week.

“The water's pretty cold in October,” Josh shouted.

The man recoiled backwards from the railing and turned toward the police officer. “What?”

“I said the water's pretty cold this time of year if you're thinking about jumping.”

“Why don't you mind your own business?”

“Right now, you are my business. I’m a cop, and suicide is a crime. More importantly, I don't want you taking a dive on my beat so please step away from the railing.”

“If you come any closer, I'll jump.”

“Take it easy. Tell me about it. I'm all ears. I want to help you.”

“Fuck off, copper,” The young man snapped. “I'm not in the mood for your bullshit.”

“Did some girl dump you?”

“No… Yes… I don't know. I'm confused, and I'm really hurting emotionally.”

“Sometimes life can be a bitch, but it’s a long way down, and there’s no turning back. You don’t get a second chance. Are you sure you want to throw your life away tonight?”

“Can't you go away and write someone a parking ticket? There's nothing you can say that's going to make a difference. My life is over. She was my soul mate. The only girl I'll ever love.”

“Maybe so. Maybe not,” Josh said. “Answer one question before you piss your life away. What do you have to lose? You're going to jump anyway. I can't stop you. I'm too far away to reach you in time.”

“Let's make it quick. What's your question?”

“Let's say there are five hundred high schools in North Dakota.”

“Why North Dakota, Sherlock?”

“Bear with me. Let's say you attended one of those high schools. You also went through elementary, middle school, and then high school with most of the females in your class.”

“What's your point?”

“Let's say you were born in one of those small towns, and you lived and died there. You never went anywhere else. Odds are you would've fallen in love and married someone in your high school. So, if there are five hundred high schools in North Dakota, you could have fallen in love and married someone in any one of them. Consequently, there's no such thing as one girl you could ever love. Thinking otherwise is some adolescent bullshit that I see here on the bridge about every other week. You’re too old to think that way.”

The young man shrugged his shoulders, and looked back into the dark water below.

“So my question is,” Josh continued, “Are you really going to throw your life away over one girl when I’ve just proved there are thousands and thousands of girls all over the country you could love and who could love you? Are you really going to be that stupid?”

The young man stood looking back at Josh for a time without saying a word, mulling over what he'd said carefully.

As Josh spoke, he edged closer to the distraught young man about twenty years old who only moments ago was ready to jump.

“Don't come any closer. I know what you're trying to do.”

The police officer stopped, but continued to speak calmly, “If I'm wrong about you being able to fall in love with five hundred girls in North Dakota, I'd like to hear you tell me where my logic is wrong.”

“I can't dispute your logic, but love is from the heart. It's not about logic. I’m hurting, man. I'm as low as I can go.”

“Do us both a favor, don't throw your life away because some girl dumped you. You don't look like the hunchback of Notre Dame from here. You don't have three heads or one eyeball in the middle of your head. There's no reason why you can't find another girl to fall in love with. What do you say? Go on home and think about it. If you want to commit suicide tomorrow, come back during Chad Harper’s beat. Let him get the blemish on his record, not mine. What do you say?”

The young man started to cry as he slumped on the railing. Josh ran to him and tried to comfort him.

“What your name?”

“Justin.”

“Justin, I'm Josh Cramer. You're not the first person to be dumped by a woman, and you won't be the last. Believe me I had my share of dumpings and heartbreaks before I met Jessica. We just got married this past weekend.”

“You really think I’ll find someone else who’ll love me, and I can love like…” he paused. Then, said sadly, “Mary.”

“My father told me one time, when Mary called him, he had to be careful before he spoke, because he didn’t know which Mary was calling.”

“Well, I guess I’m not like your father, I’m just looking for one girl to love me.”

“I was just trying to make a point, Justin. Trust me. I’m not like him either. Just believe you will find someone else, get married, and live happily ever after.”

Josh wiped the tears from his cheek. “Well. I do feel a lot better now, officer. I guess you saved my life. I was really going to jump. I would have if you hadn't come along. Are you going to write me up?”

“What for? Standing on a bridge at midnight is not committing a crime in this town.”

Josh felt good about helping the young fellow through what could've been a disaster. He couldn't wait to tell Jessica he'd saved a young man from committing suicide that evening.

“Thanks, Josh. I'll never forget you. Maybe we'll meet again somewhere. Thanks again.”

Josh removed a card from his wallet and said, "This is my personal business card. If you ever feel like committing suicide again, call me anytime day or night.”

“I will,” Justin said.

“And if you ever want to buy a house, call me about that, too.” They both laughed.

Justin headed toward the ramp leading from the bridge, and Josh followed behind him. They separated then, and Josh returned to his cruiser in the parking lot. He checked in with the precinct. It was a quiet night with nothing going down.

He started driving around the area he patrolled every night.

He noticed some rummies passing a cheap bottle of wine around next to an oil drum they used to burn paper and kindling to keep warm. He stopped the car and lowered the window. “How's it going tonight, fellas? Anybody hit the lotto when they called it at eleven o'clock?”

“We wish,” one of the unshaven homeless men answered sucking on a wine bottle.”

“Well, maybe tomorrow night.”

Another man warming his hands by the fire called out, “Did that young fellow find you?”

“What young fellow, Jasper?” Josh asked.

“He stopped and asked about you about an hour ago. We told him you'd probably be checking the bridge for jumpers, and he headed in that direction.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was about twenty-five or thirty, and all I can remember is he wore dark clothes,” Jasper said scratching his head.

“Thanks, fellas. I talked to a young fellow not long ago, who was thinking about jumping, but I don't think it was the same man you saw. Thanks for the heads up though.”

Josh drove away, puzzled by the young man asking about him. It must've been Justin; there was no one else on the bridge. But what did it mean?

His business phone vibrated in his front pants pocket. The ringer was off, but he scrambled to answer it in time.

On the third ring, he wrenched it from his pants pocket. It was the first time it had rung in a month. “Hello, Josh Cramer, Real Estate.”

“Hey, Josh. This is Justin, the guy on the bridge.”

Concerned, Josh asked, “You're not considering suicide already, are you?” It hasn't been an hour yet.”

“No. I'm not thinking about suicide. I just told you that bullshit to make you feel sorry for me.”

“So you're the guy who asked the old-timers about me?”

“Yeah, I'm the one. They said you checked the bridge every night for jumpers, and it gave me a brainstorm to pretend to be one of them. It worked like a charm.”

“What was the ruse all about, Justin? Do I know you?”

“No, you don't know me. I'm Jessica's old boyfriend. I'm the one who was going to marry her before you horned in. With the phone number you gave me, I was able to get directory assistance to give me your address. I just left your apartment. Jessica wasn't happy to see me, so, I'm leaving town.”

“What did you do?” Josh shrieked in horror.

“I told her when she dumped me, she was the only girl I'd ever love, and I would never let her marry anyone else. She ignored my threat.”

“What did you do?” Josh screamed.

“I kept hitting her, and hitting her, and hitting her with this frying pan. I don't think you'll be able to recognize her now. I messed her up pretty bad.”

“You killed my wife?”

“Yes, she’s dead all right, several times over.”

“If I get my hands on you....“

Justin interrupted, “I'm glad we had that talk on the bridge. When I left your place, I was feeling pretty down after you tried to help me, but then I remembered what you said, and I felt a whole lot better. Like you said, there might be five hundred women in North Dakota you can fall in love with and thousands everywhere else. Now I don't feel so guilty about battering Jessica’s head into a pulp. I knew your philosophy would get you through this small bump in the road.”

Now Josh was crying and thinking about the bridge himself.

“After all,” Justin said with a smirk. Who gives a fuck about Jessica when there are so many other fish in the sea? Right. Josh?”

Justin hung up, and Josh redialed several times, but no one answered.

After racing home at breakneck speed in his cruiser and verifying the horror Justin had described, Josh headed back to the bridge.

When he saw the rummies huddled around their small fire trying to keep warm, he waved.

The water was very cold in October.

THE ABHORRENT CLUB

On January 31, the Abhorrent Club, a group of one hundred multimillionaires gathered at the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan to plan their upcoming annual extravaganza.

In recent years, it was getting harder to find disgusting things to do. At last year's gala, they played a series of horrific snuff films showing real men and women being tortured and brutally murdered in HD quality with Surround Sound. The year before, they’d watched a parade of beautiful females, who’d been abducted while on vacation in Europe, being sold as sex slaves by a drunken trafficking lord. After this had become too boring, they’d traveled across town to another venue to watch starved Dobermans fight to the death for a piece of raw meat.

This kind of entertainment was expensive, but these degenerates had the cash. Boredom was always a problem for twisted, affluent people, eternally looking for a thrill at any cost.

Byron Kingsberry tapped on the microphone and opened the floor for suggestions. Peering across the expanse of white-linen-covered tables and the one hundred members attending the luncheon that cost twenty thousand dollars, he didn't see a single hand rise.

“Come on people,” Kingsberry shouted in disgust. “I’ve chosen the event the past two years, and except for several members passing out and throwing up, both affairs were overwhelmingly successful.”

Someone in the back of the room yelled, “That’s why you should do it again this year, Byron.”

After a round of applause, Mephisto McMullan rose from his chair. “I've always thought an orgy with well hung male models and big bosomed females would make for a never to be forgotten evening.”

“That idea has come up before," Byron said, "and not all of the members want to participate in communal sex. Some, to put it bluntly, don't want to take their clothes off in front of the other members. But the real problem with the idea is having an orgy is just good clean fun. It doesn't make you want to puke your guts out in disgust, and that's what the Abhorrent Club is all about.”

“You misunderstand me, Byron. I propose we choose ugly, deformed models not beautiful ones to have sex with, and that will be disgusting.”

“That is a novel idea,” Kingsberry said, making a note on a pad. “I believe that does deserve a vote in spite of the prudes who don't want to undress.”

McMullan added, “I'm sure not every person wanted to be party to watching real people being murdered in Mexico last year, but we went ahead with it anyway.”

“Your point is well taken. No proposal for any event will ever get one hundred percent approval and participation. Okay, we'll put that one on the list as a possibility. We need at least two more suggestions and some rebuttal, then we'll take a vote.”

Christian Peabody timidly rose and stood in the middle of the room. “Do you think we could have some slaves fight to the death in one of the outdoor pavilions like they had in the coliseum in Rome? That certainly would be the height of depravity in this day and age.”

Kingsberry shook his head and turned toward him. “The problem with that, Christian, is it's hard to find formidable Caucasian slaves with homicidal tendencies to add to the mix. And as in the case with most basketball teams, the majority of our members don't want all the participants to be black. It's okay if half of the gladiators are Afro-American, but not all of them.”

“Curses. It’s a shame we can't find white combatant slaves anymore. What is the world coming to?”

“Well, let's put it on the list and see how many would like to pursue it.”

Raul Fulton, who was obviously tipsy and almost knocked over his chair when he stood, reminisced. “I remember when I was a little boy, I went to a carnival, and I saw a really sick freak show with all kinds of grotesque and gruesome people. I can't think of anything we could do to sink to the lowest level of bad taste and depravity than organizing a really horrific group of misfits in a freak show.”

“Egads, Raul! I like that idea. I think you may have come up with a winner,” Byron said enthusiastically.

After another hour of discussion of the pros and cons of the possible events, the Club took a vote on the final three despicable suggestions for this year’s gala. The freak show won by a landslide. Sex with ugly deformed undesirables came in second.

* * *

Finally, the long-awaited night came. Block long limousines arrived at a spooky estate on a bluff overlooking the ocean at the tip of Cape Cod.

The club hired one of the most expensive and prestigious chefs in Manhattan to cater the affair. Mephisto McMullan’s personal jet delivered the cuisine only an hour before the event took place.

The committee handpicked the servers according to their degree of deformity. If they could carry a tray, regardless of any shocking physical atrocity, they were selected.

The eerie surroundings of the mansion where several horror movies had been filmed had just the right atmosphere for the occasion. The decorator for the event removed the traditional paintings from the walls and replaced them with the carnival posters advertising the freaks headlining the show, which was to last for about two hours.

As the members of the club circulated with their cocktails and conversed about the startling images filling the walls around them, everyone could feel the excitement building.

Byron and his wife, Amelia, went out on the balcony with their cocktails after dinner and watched the waves crashing on the rocks below. “Do you remember what movies were filmed here?” Amelia asked, pulling her shawl a little tighter around her.

“I believe they said one of the versions of Agatha Christie's novel, And Then There Were None. Maybe the one called Ten Little Indians.”

They couldn't have picked a scarier place. It's awesome, particularly with the sand dunes, the sound of the surf outside, and all those carnival posters with those god-awful faces of human monsters.”

“You're right, Amelia, and I hate to admit it, but Raul may have selected the all time gross out event in our history, and that’s saying something.”

“Well, it's almost eight o'clock. Let's go into the auditorium. I want to be sure to get a front row seat.”

“Do you think we’ll be splattered with blood if we sit that close?”

“I can only hope.”

“Did you remember your vomit bag?”

“Of course, I wouldn't think of going to the show without it.”

Finally, everyone was seated and bubbling over with anticipation.

When the curtain rose, two young men in tuxedos wheeled out two conjoined brothers without arms and legs. They were nude, and massive floodlights above the stage displayed every shocking detail of their deformity, the body piercings, and the grotesque tattoos. Four enormous monitors, two on each side panned in so the members not as close to the stage could see every detail in startling clarity. The sound of members throwing up two-hundred-dollar a plate dinners and the consequent stench of it added to the appalling morbidity of the first act.

Suddenly, a wail of hysterical laughter, reminiscent of a scalded hyena, erupted from Amelia Kingsberry’s strident vocal chords. Everyone turned to glare at her, trying to understand what could be hilarious about the pitiful being on the stage. A voice with a British accent droned the name of the disease and the details of it in case anyone present was interested. Afterward, two men wheeled the brothers off stage as they made faces at the audience.

After a minute of breath catching and time to signal the waiter for another cocktail, a naked woman about four feet tall with the head of an ape swung from the sidelines and landed on a red X in the middle of the stage. She looked right and then left, and without warning bounded to the lip of the apron. There, she let out a piercing scream that rivaled Johnny Weissmuller’s legendary Tarzan call that almost every Tarzan after him used.

The front row recoiled backwards in horror, several spilling their drinks. Then, the she-ape grinned broadly. Her piercing eyes and dazzling white teeth contrasted with her black hairy head. Just as before, the Brit commentator gave the name and details of her disease that caused her abnormality.

Then a short horizontal bar suspended by ropes from above swept from the rear of the stage to directly above the she-ape's head. She grabbed it with enormous hands, catapulted high above the audience, and disappeared into the darkness on the far side of the auditorium. The curtain went down to uproarious applause.

“Bravo!” Mephisto McMullan shouted, which precipitated an even bigger round of applause from the members.

“Raul, this is spectacular,” someone shouted.

After a longer delay, which allowed those seated in the front row to replace the drinks they’d spilled, the curtain opened. Suddenly, from a dark stage, a spotlight shown on a woman's blonde hair. She too was completely naked except for a cloth bag tied about her waist. Her body rippled with muscles like a bodybuilder.

As she came closer and closer, the golden crescents of her nipple jewelry glistened in the dazzling stage lights. The black Gothic makeup around her eyes held the audience spellbound. Then, she reached into the bag and withdrew the biggest, ugliest rat anyone had ever seen and bit its head off. Blood spurted in all directions until she turned her face upward and raising the headless carcass, let the blood wash over her body.

Amelia's piercing hysterical laugh was like an amplified fart at the funeral of the pope. It threatened every eardrum and crystal goblet in the room. As various women puked their guts out, Amelia's tirade continued until Byron on the brink of lunacy, turned and slapped her so hard she fell from her chair onto the floor. “Amelia, this is not funny. You're ruining this wonderful show for everyone. Shut the fuck up.”

Amelia struggled to her feet and ran for the sidelines sobbing. Byron stood and said to everyone, “I sincerely apologize for my wife's outburst.”

Everyone's gaze returned to the blood splattered stage, now littered with two more headless rats. The blonde rat killer ended her act by somersaulting offstage. The curtains closed, and the audience buzzed about the act on and off stage while the cleanup crew prepared for the next act.

When the curtain finally reopened, the agitated din of the audience quickly subsided. The men in tuxedos wheeled out Penguin Boy, a pitifully deformed creature with hands and feet attached directly to his torso. He proceeded to do several card tricks, and he sang a beautiful rendition of Unchained Melody. The Brit announcer named his malady and the details of the disease in the same monotone as before.

Someone on the right yelled, ”Where is Michael Buffer when you need him?”

Penguin Boy ended his act by blowing a perfect smoke ring, then curling his tongue around a lit cigarette and making it disappear inside his mouth for a time and then reappear still burning.

As the boy waddled offstage, someone in the back screamed, “More blood!” The audience cheered.

The first four acts were followed by: No Jaw, a man with his jaw and ears below his face; Serpentine Lady, a woman who could wiggle like a snake and bend her body parts in any direction; Pinhead, a man with the small cone shaped head on a normally proportioned body; Rubber Man, a man whose face hung down below his knees. And finally, The Human Torso, a man born with no arms and legs finished the first act. Everyone cheered with delight at the most entertaining show ever.

The curtain went down for intermission. Several of the most deformed waiters served drinks and heavy hors d'oeuvres in the spacious lobby. The Missing Link, a man who looked like something between an ape and a prehistoric man, did card tricks for added color.

Mephisto approached Raul, “Let me compliment you again for your selection of this year's event. I must say, I never thought a show like this would be this exciting. The freaks not only have horrific deformities, they also have incredible acts, except for Penguin Boy. They aren't just sitting there drooling at you; they’re performing like champions. Where did we find freaks, who are also talented entertainers?”

“Believe it or not, there is an agency that specializes in freak show entertainment. These pitiful souls make extra money at special functions in addition to their normal venues. Unfortunately, well-meaning people who don't know what the fuck they are doing are causing them not to be able to remain independent. They are campaigning against shows like this, saying they are in poor taste. This cuts off the only income these poor devils can find since it’s almost impossible for them to find a normal job. They still make good money in circuses and carnivals, but now their supplementary income opportunities have been taken away since they are not politically correct.”

“That is sad,” Raul said, sucking on a blue cheese stuffed olive he removed from his empty martini glass. “By the way, I also love the scary mansion where we're holding the event. It's so deliciously dark as a dungeon except in the auditorium.”

Byron walked up to them, holding a fresh Grey Goose martini. “I heard you say you like the venue I chose for the event.”

“It certainly adds an eerie ambiance to the show,” Raul said, looking at the she-ape poster on the wall. “When they dim the lights, I can feel a chill on the back of my neck. And when the lights go out completely, well, I won’t embarrass myself with those details. By the way, old man, sorry about Amelia.”

“She must have had too much to drink,” Byron explained. “I'm sure she's embarrassed by her lack of judgment at laughing at something not funny to anyone else.”

McMullan replied, “Some people laugh when they are frightened to keep their sanity. She might be one of them.”

A weird gong sounded.

“I guess it's time to go back into the auditorium again,” Byron shouted to everyone.

“I can't wait to see what's next,” Mephisto said excitedly.

After everyone was seated, Byron was surprised Amelia was still absent. He called her on his cell, but she didn't answer. The curtains started up, and he put his phone away.

On the stage, the spotlights were fixed on a masked, gagged woman strapped to a platform. She seemed to be trying to free herself from bondage.

Then something between a horse and a man galloped from the wings to the left on all fours to center stage. He had a long blonde mane and a long narrow equine face with pronounced buckteeth. His eyes were further apart and situated on the side of his head, not far from his ears. He made a whinnying sound, and then his loud bellowing laugh seemed to shake the building.

Then, the enormous creature stood completely erect like a normal man. Standing eight feet tall, his enormous muscles bulged with Herculean power. The audience gasped at the sight of his magnificent physique, and most specifically, the size of his enormous, erect penis. The shaft was not only frightfully long, but frightfully stout in girth as well.

He strode directly to the platform, vertically positioned so it faced the audience. He leapt on to the platform, climbed onto the squirming woman, and straddled her like he'd just completed a pushup. Placing the tip of his shaft into her vagina, he hovered above her so that as many members as possible could see through his legs. In the four huge monitors situated around the room, the woman’s shapely thighs seemed small in relationship to his manhood. Every person sat in awe at the length of his shaft compared to the distance to the table. Every person cringed at the thought of what would happen next.

Then like a human pile driver, he thrust his manhood into her only halfway. The woman on the table spasmed in agony, and the cameras panned in for a close-up to record each gut wrenching thrust until the shaft disappeared entirely inside of her. There was no applause. No one moved a muscle. They just sat paralyzed in shock and disbelief. The half horse, half man thing dismounted her and slid back onto the floor. His torso was covered with blood as he bowed, flexed his bulging muscles, and laughed defiantly, showing every bucktooth in his head. Then, dropping to all fours, he galloped off stage.

The audience could see the blood pooling around the limp female body. Byron couldn't process what he had just seen, and neither could anyone else who had witnessed the ultimate in depraved acts. He had an eerie feeling in the pit of his stomach. Where was Amelia? She'd been gone too long.

While the curtain went down, he saw the two young men wheeling the woman away to the left. Two other men with buckets and mops headed toward center stage.

When the curtains closed off the horror completely, Byron jumped up and moved quickly in the direction of the woman and the platform.

He bounded up a short flight of stairs and disappeared behind the curtain. He saw the men enter a long hallway backstage and rushed toward them.

“Please stop!” he shouted.

They stopped in midstride and turned toward him. Immediately, he saw the faces of the young men were really masks. They were so well crafted he had not been able to detect this even from his front row seat.

He pushed past them and removed the bloody sheet covering the woman's body. The woman also wore a mask. With trembling hands, he lifted it from her face. When Byron saw Amelia’s dead eyes frozen in horror and blood flowing from her mouth, he screamed even louder and longer than his wife had earlier. Then to add to the nightmare, the men removed their masks, and Byron recoiled from a sight no human eyes could see and remain sane. He thought his scream transformed into a hysterical wail. He even detected a slight strain of scalded hyena in the tone.

The thing on the right gripped Byron with steel hands and said to the pitiful creature next to him, "I think this guy will make a good Frog Man for the second show. Once we break all his bones, he'll have hyper-extendable joints just like the disease calls for. No one will no the difference.”

The creature nodded since he had no tongue.

Byron started struggling desperately to escape, but to no avail.

"Your wife's not laughing anymore, is she?” the thing said, “and you'll be joining her shortly. None of you degenerate clowns are getting out of here alive. Your group had The Human Torso’s sister killed in your snuff film last year. Now all of you are going to pay. You’ll find out first hand how it feels to be one of the main attractions in a freak show.”

A light bulb went off in the thing’s feeble brain. “Do you juggle by any chance? Can you do any card tricks?”

The pitiful thing with no tongue looked at his colleague like he was a moron. Byron kept screaming.

“What was I thinking?” the creature said, turning toward Byron and breaking two of his fingers. “Forget about the juggling and the magic. Frog Man won’t be able to do any tricks with all his bones broken.”

DEAD

Noah and Isabella sat on the sofa and loveseat watching American Idol when the doorbell rang.

“Who could that be?” Noah said. “No one comes to visit at 10 p.m., not even a Jehovah's Witness.”

“Maybe they'll go away, if you simply ignore it.”

“They can hear the TV. They know we're in here. Maybe one of the neighbors needs something. I’d better answer it.”

“Suit yourself, Noah. I wouldn't answer it. I'm in my pajamas.”

Noah rose and crept toward the foyer. The doorbell sounded a second time. When he reached the front door, he sneaked a peek through the peephole. What Noah saw took his breath away. He couldn't move or speak as he peered in disbelief at the figure on the porch.

“Let me in, Dad.”

“Who are you?” Noah said, not wanting to acknowledge what his brain had just processed.

“Don't you know your own son?”

“Who is it, Noah?” Isabella shouted from the living room.

“He says he's Jaden.”

“Jaden? Tell him the joke’s not funny, and we're going to call the police if he doesn't leave us alone.”

Noah remembered the way his son looked the last time he saw him. He ignored his wife’s protests and opened the door. A bedraggled young man in a wrinkled suit streaked with dirt stood under the porch light. His eyes were unmistakably his son’s. He gasped and couldn't put a sentence together.

Isabella saw the figure and moved swiftly toward the foyer. She let out a small scream when she saw him. Her hand shot to her mouth, and her legs were so weak she could barely stand.

Noah stepped aside and let Jaden, who died in an automobile accident eleven years before, enter the house.

Let's go into the kitchen,” Jaden said. “My clothes are a little funky. I don't want to sit on the sofa like this.”

His parents followed their son into the kitchen, and they all sat in the same seats they’d always occupied when Jaden was alive.

“I don't understand,” Noah said, “You can't be our son. He's buried in Morningside Cemetery.”

“I was only buried for a few hours, Dad. The undertaker had his crew dig me up after the funeral. He was going to resell the coffin to someone else. His men put me in a large trash bag and dumped me in a hole somewhere out of town. I crawled away before the rats could get to me.”

“How could you be alive? You’d been embalmed, for God’s sake.”

“I was never embalmed. The undertaker got drunk that night and forgot to embalm me. I was messed up in the accident. My face was so obliterated; my casket was closed at the funeral. It was a circus of errors I tell you, but I escaped.”

“What your saying makes no sense. You were mangled in the crash. The officer at the scene told us you died instantly. Even if you weren’t embalmed, your head and your chest were crushed. You were stone cold dead.”

“So does my head and body looked crushed now?”

“No. You seem better, but have you looked in the mirror lately?”

“Of course. Look, Mom and Dad. When I reached the pearly gates, my guardian angel saved me and took me under his wing.”

Noah and Isabella looked at each other, trying to make sense of what Jaden was telling them, but couldn’t.

“So, where have you been for the last eleven years?” his mother asked skeptically, her face wet with tears.

“I’ve been providing services to my guardian angel in exchange for him making me whole again.”

“I’m sorry, son,” his mother replied. “I can’t get my mind around this guardian angel thing right now.”

“So, why have you returned now, after all this time?” his father asked, in bewilderment.

“I’m your son. I belong here with you in the world of the living, not the world of the dead. I plan to start where I left off tomorrow. How is Sophia doing? I want to marry her and start a family right away.”

“I'm sorry, Jaden. She married Liam Nelson three years ago, and she has two children now.”

“She dumped me and married that asshole Liam Nelson?”

“What did you expect her to do? You were dead and buried as far as she knew for eight years.”

“I guess I’ll have to find someone else. I never thought this would happen. Well, at least I can call Jesse Simpson and talk to him about getting my old job back at Windows on the World.”

His father looked puzzled and dampened his enthusiasm, “I don’t know where you’ve been and why you don’t know it, but terrorists crashed two 747s into the World Trade Center in 2001. Both towers collapsed, and about three thousand people were killed. I believe everyone present at the restaurant on the top floor of the tower was killed.”

“I can’t believe this. Well, maybe I can get my old job back as manager of Borders. Certainly, they must be a possibility.”

“Sorry, son. Borders folded. People buy e-books today. Paperbacks and hardcovers are quickly becoming obsolete. Also, smart phones have replaced CDs. A lot of things have changed since you died in 2000.”

“So, what have you been doing for this guardian angel all these years?” Isabella asked nervously.

“My guardian angel has kept me so busy doing his bidding, I never had time for anything else. Mostly, I’ve been doing odd jobs for him. Anything he asked me to do. After all, I owe him everything.”

“Where is he now?”

“He's always with me. Do you want to see him?”

“Yes. If it’s possible,” she said hesitantly.

“Of course, when do you want to meet him?”

“How about now?” she said holding her breath and flinching.

“Fine.”

Jaden snapped his fingers, and a fiendish man with a goatee and horns atop his head, wearing a long red flowing cape, appeared in a puff of smoke. He didn't look happy to meet Jaden’s parents.

“Jaden said proudly, beaming from ear to ear, “Meet my guardian angel.” The foreboding stranger’s image fluctuated before them like a mirage.

They recoiled in horror from Lucifer’s evil presence.

“What's wrong, Dad? What's wrong, Mom? Why aren't you happy to meet my guardian angel? If not for him, I would be worm bait and six feet under now.”

“Are you blind? Can't you see he's not your guardian angel? He's the devil.”

“The devil!” Jaden shouted in anger. “What's wrong with you people? Aren't you glad to see me?”

“Not exactly, son. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?”

Lucifer whispered in Jaden’s ear, “I have some pressing business I have to take care of. Tell your parents I’ll have to shoot the shit with them some other time.” He disappeared in another puff of smoke. A bolt of lightning thundered outside, and the wind sounded like hell had broken loose.

“Now look what you’ve done. He felt the negative vibes, and he’s taken off.“

“Where does he live?”

“He hangs out in Limbo, Illinois. He operates a whorehouse, and an assisted living facility there. He's also into a little child pornography.”

“Do you have any idea what you're saying, son?” Isabella groaned with disapproval. “Are you still as gullible as you were when you were alive?”

“Mom, did you hear what I said? I owe my guardian angel everything. We made a deal, and now I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. Tomorrow morning I will resume my new life. Maybe I can get my old job back at the bowling alley. Or maybe I could try real estate.”

“Do you remember when Joey Hoodwink traded you his Mickey Mantle rookie card for three thousand of your generic cards?”

Jaden hung his head in shame. “Sure, Mom. I remember the rookie card was a reissue, not the original, and it was worth almost nothing. It even had a chunk out of the left corner. He really pulled the wool over my eyes on that one.”

“Do you remember when Marty sold you the rubber python for fifty dollars?”

“I remember. It sure looked real, but I had to move it manually to make it move.”

“I'm afraid, your guardian angel… Enough of this guardian angel shit. What does he call himself in Limbo, Illinois?”

“Everyone calls him, Harvey.”

“Well, son. Harvey has tricked you just like Joey and Marty did. He knew you were an easy mark when he saw your lopsided head at the pearly gates, and he made away with your soul.”

“I don't believe Harvey would ever mislead me. He's been like a father to me all these years.”

“What specifically have you been doing for the slimy bastard?”

“Simple stuff like firebombing a few mom-and-pop convenience stores, contaminating a few villages in East Africa with smallpox. Nothing earth shattering.”

”And you thought he was your guardian angel even after he made you do those terrible things?”

“Bringing me back from the dead was no piece of cake, Mom.”

“Listen to me for once in your life. Keep as far away from him as you can. If you have done his bidding, and your arrangement is over, he doesn't need you anymore. Tomorrow morning, you'll probably be back at the pearly gates, but if you contaminated the African village with small box, you might be burning in Hell for all eternity.”

“You're wrong. Both of you. Harvey is a swell guy. Look at me. I'm whole again. I’m ready to resume my life again.”

“Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

“That’s the third time you’ve asked me that. I’m whole. I've been restored. I look the same as I did before the accident. Tomorrow, I will go to an employment agency and fill out an application for a new job. Now that I have fulfilled my contract with my guardian angel, I'm ready to begin my new life. You both should be happy for me.”

“Look in the mirror, son.”

Jaden saw a floor-to-ceiling mirror in the foyer and moved quickly toward it.

Stepping in front of it, he recoiled in horror at his deformed skull like face with dark recesses around his dead eyes. The flesh on one side of his face had been torn away showing his broken, rotten teeth.

Jaden couldn't believe Harvey, his guardian angel, had misled him all these years. He had hoped to marry Sophia and have children. He was excited about getting a new job and starting a successful new career of promise and fulfillment. Now, looking at the monster in the mirror, he knew this could never be. Sophia would never have given him a second look with his eyeball hanging from its socket. He would not be able to get his old job back at the bowling alley either.

Jaden took the keys from the kitchen counter and headed outside where his father's car was parked. He got in, started the engine, and drove away.

* * *

When Harvey Beelzebub awoke from a wild night of drinking and whoring, he saw Jaden sitting in a chair facing him. “Hey, Jaden,” he groaned. “You sure are here bright and early. It's your big day. You’re about to be a free man. Ready to take the world by the balls.”

“Something has happened to my face, Harvey. It’s decomposing back to what it was after my accident.”

Harvey reached for the buzzer on the night table and in doing so, woke up a voluptuous teenager with a brand-new 60-inch bust buried under the sheets.

Two muscle-bound monsters with green skin grabbed Jaden and dragged him away screaming.

“Harvey! You promised me!”

“Sorry, kid. They're waiting for you at the pearly gates.”

“Will they let me in with my face looking like this?”

“Of course. You look good compared to a lot of them who’ll want to welcome you.”

“There is a welcoming committee?”

“A real horde.”

“Who are they?”

“Some of the victims of the village you contaminated with smallpox in Africa, and a few of the geezers from the fire bombings may stop by for old times.”

“But Harvey, I only did what you told me to do.”

“Be sure to tell them that. I'm not sure it will make a difference, but you never know.”

VAMPIRE

Detective Ralph Rafferty pulled back the sheet someone had placed on top of the body. He winced when he saw the young woman's dead eyes glaring back at him. Her face was ashen, and like the other four recent victims, he saw the two deep puncture wounds in her neck.

His partner, Sid Ripley, was standing on the street talking to the Looky Lous milling about, hoping he might recognize one of them from the previous murders. Rafferty watched the crime scene crew moving in and out of the house collecting forensic evidence as he walked over for a consult. If they found any evidence here, it would be the first time. The other four murder scenes were completely clean. The real mystery was no DNA in the puncture wounds, which made no sense since the perp had somehow drained the last drop of blood from all five victims.

Rafferty approached Ripley, who had stepped away from the others and to make a note on his phone, and asked, “Did anyone see anything out of the ordinary?”

“Nope. Not a thing.”

“It’s the same M.O.?”

“Yeah. She was a little younger, but it's sure to be the same psycho who did the others.”

“Five young women dead, and we don’t have a clue,” Rafferty said, shaking his head in disgust. “Did you have a chance to check with the local realtors yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes. I checked. A young lady and her son are the only new residents in the last four months.”

“Where do they live?”

“The old Ramsey house down by the cemetery.”

“Now that is strange,” Rafferty muttered, as they headed to their Crown Vic parked across the street. They got in, Ripley at the wheel. Rafferty continued, “Who in their right mind would buy that old falling down place, particularly next to the graveyard?”

“Either a very poor or a very warped individual. There are too many ghosts hanging around graveyards.”

“Not everyone believes in ghosts like you, Sid.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time my mom saw a ghost?”

“Only ten or twenty times,” Rafferty said rolling his eyes.

“Are you calling my mom a liar?” Ripley said jokingly.

“Didn’t you tell me she hit the bottle pretty heavy from time to time?”

“Who doesn't have a few too many once in a while. I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they get up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”

“You stole that line from Frank Sinatra. Or was it Dean Martin?”

“It was Frank. So what part of the story didn't you buy?”

“Just about all of it,” Rafferty chuckled. “As I recall, your mother saw your next door neighbor walking her dog when she went by in her car. When she came home later, your father told her he read in the paper that neighbor had died the night before.”

“That's right! You do remember. So, how do you explain it?”

“She dreamed it. She had too much to drink. She saw her the day before and was confused. There could be a lot of reasons.”

“What about the night my grandma died?”

“Did someone see a ghost that time, too?”

“No. It was more of a supernatural thing,” Ripley cupped his hands and made a high pitched scary sound.”

“I don't remember that story.”

“My mom and dad and a whole roomful of people were paying their respects at the old homestead the night she died. The lights were dim, but it wasn't dark. The doctor had told everyone Granny wouldn't make it through the night. It was as quiet as a tomb with everyone sitting around waiting for the end.”

“I can't believe your grandmother would want all those people watching her die. I certainly wouldn't.”

“It's a family tradition. Most of the relatives were from out of town. What did you expect them to do, mourn in their motel room?”

“So what happened?”

Ripley lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “I was only ten years old. I think my mom forgot I was there,” Ripley sighed eerily. “Suddenly everyone in the room heard the sound of a rubber ball hitting the ceiling and the floor over and over and over again.”

“You and the others were all sitting in the room when it happened, and no one saw a thing. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Right. I saw it with my own eyes... I mean I heard with my own ears. When the ball stopped bouncing, she was dead. It was the scariest thing I ever witnessed, and I'll never forget it.” Ripley made the scary sound again. “Ghosts and the supernatural are real. There’s no doubt about it. I’m an eyewitness or an ear witness. You know what I mean.”

“Does this mean you believe in vampires and werewolves?”

“No, those things are only folklore.”

Rafferty thought about debating the logic of deciding which bogeymen were real, but knew it would be pointless. “So, the young woman and her son moved into the Ramsey house in the last four months?”

“Correct. And she moved in right before the murders started.”

“The only one… huh? What do you say we drop in on her?”

“What else do we have to do? We’re desperate for a clue.”

Fifteen minutes later Rafferty and Ripley pulled up at the last house on the secluded street in the small town of Busby. Rafferty shook his head in bewilderment. "I can’t believe a young woman would want to live in a dark, dismal place like this.”

They got out of their Crown Vic, walked to the front door, and Ripley knocked.

In a few moments, a young woman opened the door and glared suspiciously at the two detectives. Rafferty and Ripley showed her their badges and asked to speak with her inside since it was a cold day in December.

The strange woman with her hair in an old-fashioned, tightly wound bun peered at the sun going down in the distance through the gnarled trees. Reluctantly she led them into the parlor and they took a seat in some very old stuffed armchairs. Even after she turned on the lamp on a corner table, the room was uncomfortably dark and gloomy. Several faded family portraits of people they assumed were long dead glared at them from the shadows. The wind whined in the eaves, and the roof creaked.

The woman's penetrating eyes that seemed much larger than normal unnerved Rafferty, but he finally started with the first question, “Your name is Shadow Montague?”

“Yes, it is,” she said in a whispery, seductive voice. “My father had a rather warped sense of humor.”

Ripley didn’t understand why Rafferty kept avoiding the woman’s gaze, but it was obvious he was.

“And you have a son?” Rafferty continued.

“Yes.”

“His name is Nigel Montague?”

“Yes.”

“Does he attend Woodlawn Elementary?”

“No. He has a private tutor.” Montague rose, and. stepping into Rafferty’s line of sight, she asked, “Could you tell me why you’re here? Am I suspected of a crime?”

“No, Mrs. Montague,” he replied. “We’re speaking with everyone in the area about the five mysterious murders committed by the fiend the media calls ‘The Vampire Killer.’ And since you are the most recent resident of Busby, we wanted to warn you to keep your doors and windows locked at all times, particularly since you live on one of the town's most secluded streets. Are you aware of the murders?”

“Yes, as I understand it from the news accounts, the victims have been drained of their blood, and all have puncture wounds on their necks. I assume you suspect it is the work of a vampire?”

Both detectives were stunned by Montague’s indifference to the existence of such a creature at large in the community. Rafferty explained, “Although the draining of blood and the puncture wounds to the jugular do suggest a vampire, we believe the murders were committed by a deranged psychopath who either believes he is a vampire or is pretending to be one. After all, such creatures only exist in the movies and in folklore.”

“In my part of the world, vampires are not considered folklore,” Montague said in a wistful tone.

“Where are you from, may I ask?”

“I'm from Transylvania, a region in Romania, commonly associated with vampires because of a number of popular novels and movies. Some people consider it the vampire capital of the world.

“Do you believe they exist?” Ripley asked, completely entranced by the mystic aura of the strange woman.

“Absolutely. There are many documented cases in my country.”

“Hmmm.” Rafferty mused, "I wonder why we don't have one documented case in the states?”

“What about the ones here in Busby?” Montague asked.

“As I said, we're looking for a psychopath who thinks he's a vampire.”

“Ah, yes.”

“You don't seem to be at all threatened that someone is lurking about murdering people,” Ripley remarked.

“In Romania, vampires have roamed the countryside for centuries. Vampire hunters are always on their trail. I'm sure you must have heard of Van Helsing.”

Rafferty immediately assumed Montague was a screwball and completely delusional. “Van Helsing is a fictional character in Bram Stoker's classic novel, Dracula,” he said flatly.

“The characters in Stoker's book are not fictional but the names had been changed to protect the innocent as Jack Webb aptly put it in his old TV show. Much of that book was taken from actual accounts.”

“Have you ever met a real life vampire hunter?”

“Actually, I’ve met a real life vampire, and my father was a vampire hunter.”

Rafferty winked at Ripley. “So what can the citizens of Busby do to ward off such a creature?”

“Certainly you've seen a vampire film before. There are plenty of them. Crucifixes, garlic, and mirrors are common combatants until the vampire hunter intervenes.”

“Mrs. Montague, what will we do for a vampire hunter here in Busby? I've never seen an ad in the paper for one.”

“Why Detective Rafferty, I thought you and your partner were vampire hunters. Certainly, you must have a wooden stake and a mallet in your possession at all times.” She smiled showing very pronounced canines and a blood red tongue.

That remark was the final straw and all the detectives could tolerate for one afternoon. They stood and Rafferty said, "Thank you so much for your time, Mrs. Montague. We will do our best to bring the killer to justice.”

“I'm sorry Detective Rafferty, your job is not to bring him to justice. It's to drive a stake through his heart. That's the only way you can stop him.”

“I'll talk to the Captain about requisitioning some stakes to all the members of the local police force. Thanks again for your time. Keep your doors locked.”

“Doors won't keep a vampire out,” she shouted as they headed for their car.

The detectives didn't respond to this last remark. They just got into the car and drove away.

“Man, that lady is looney iunes. Do you think we should call social services to find a suitable home for her son? There's no telling what that bitch might do next,” Ripley ranted.

“When we get back to the station, I'll call Penelope and get someone out here.”

* * *

Two days later, Rafferty received a call from Penelope at social services, “Ralph, we sent Maggie Tyler to the Montague residence yesterday. She interviewed the mother and the child and except for the dark atmosphere and a few idiosyncrasies of Mrs. Montague, she found nothing to warrant further intervention by our department.”

“That's hard for me to understand,” Rafferty said in disbelief, “My partner and I thought the woman must have escaped from the looney bin. She seemed completely psychotic to us. I certainly wouldn't want her to raise my children.”

“Was she violent or abusive? Slovenly? All drugged up?”

“No. It's what she said about vampires. She not only believes they exist; she said she’d met one personally. She told us emphatically to get a wooden stake and a mallet if we wanted to stop the psychopath.”

“Mrs. Montague is from a Romanian culture. Ghosts, goblins, and vampires have been part of their heritage for centuries. You wouldn't believe all the ogres they have in their bedtime stories.”

“Do you believe in ghosts and goblins, Penelope?” Rafferty asked with a hint of sarcasm.

“My beliefs have nothing to do with Mrs. Montague and raising her child. Miss Tyler indicated in her report the boy is smart, happy, well groomed, and well cared for. He displayed great affection for his mother. Miss Tyler found nothing to suggest we should intervene.”

“Well, thanks for looking into the matter. I'm glad Miss Tyler escaped in one piece. I wouldn't want to go to that place by myself without my 44 Magnum on my hip... or without my wooden stake and mallet.” Rafferty chuckled and winked at Ripley.

“Detective Rafferty!”

“Sorry. Just blowing off steam. These murders have me on edge.”

* * *

Three days later, someone found another victim in the town park. A boy walking his dog discovered a woman’s body. She was drained of blood and had the same puncture wounds on her neck.

Later that day after they returned to headquarters from the crime scene, Ripley in reviewing the murder books, discovered the murders occurred every twenty-eight days like clockwork.

“It seems like the perp needs a fix every four weeks,” Ripley remarked.

“If that’s true, she won't strike again until February fifteenth. I guess we can go on vacation until then.”

“Fat chance. Why did you say she wouldn’t strike?”

“I think this bitch, Montague, is the vampire. Delusional or authentic. We know everyone else in this hick town. I checked with the doc, and he says not one of his patients have shown signs of going wacko lately.”

“Well… I've been thinking,“ Ripley said, staring into space, “Remember when we talked to her on the porch when we first arrived?”

“Do I? I'll never forget it.”

“The sun was going down. I remember her looking at it in the sky. She had an odd expression on her face.”

“Yeah,” Rafferty said. “I do remember that.”

“Under vampire rules, how could she be outside in the daylight? If she were a real vampire, she would have burned up when she answered the door, and the sun hit her. She should have been in a coffin in the basement until the sun went completely down, and not come to the door at all. How do you explain that?”

Rafferty nodded. “You're right, but… not all movies have the same vampire rules Bram Stoker had in his book. Sometimes vampires can go outside during the day. Sometimes they turn into bats, sometimes into wolves. Sometimes they show their reflection in the mirror. It all depends on the plot of the story.”

“So, you're saying some vampires may not be affected by these things.”

“I don’t know. It’s confusing. I only know what I’ve seen in the movies. Who knows what happens in real life?” Rafferty replied. “This is all supposed to be bullshit anyway, only legend and folklore. If I had to choose between a wooden stake and my Smith and Wesson 44 Magnum, I’d let my gun do the talking every time.”

“You heard what Montague said. And since we’re traveling in unchartered territory, I'd take both along to be sure. You don't want to come up empty-handed.”

* * *

On February 15, Rafferty and Ripley pulled into a parking space that had an unobstructed view of Mrs. Montague's house. Rafferty opened the glove box and took out his night vision glasses.

Ripley said, looking at the sky, “You don't need them yet. It’s another forty-five minutes until dark, and the perp never strikes until much later.”

“The early bird gets the worm,” Rafferty said.

“Watcha got in the bag?”

“Oh, just a few things. I want to be prepared.”

Ripley reached into the backseat, lifted the sack, and looked inside. “Hmmm…a mallet, a wooden stake, a crucifix, and two grenades. I thought we were looking for a psychopath who believes he's a vampire.”

“We are, but just in case, I want to be prepared for whatever comes down.”

“That woman really rattled you, didn't she?”

“She made my skin crawl. She’s evil. There's no doubt about it,” Rafferty said, inspecting his revolver.

After the sun disappeared below the horizon, the only sound was their own breathing. Both men watched the house and the yard surrounding it. They saw a single light on the first floor. They both wore night vision glasses as the hours passed, which was extremely tedious.

At ten o'clock, Ripley said, “Did you see that?”

“I saw something, but it went by so fast, I'm not sure what it was. It wasn't very tall. It might've been some kind of dog. It ran across the backyard into the bushes like an animal. I don't think it was Montague. It didn't look like a person.”

“What should we do? Should we check on her?”

“No one called in a murder yet. We're not dogcatchers. We're vampire hunters,” Rafferty said, not cracking a smile.

“Remember, in some movies, vampires turn into wolves. Maybe that’s what it was.”

“Let’s not creep ourselves out, Sid. Let's sit tight a little while longer.”

At eleven o'clock, they saw something emerge from the bushes, run across the lawn, and disappear behind the house.

“There it was again! Whatever we saw the first time,” Ripley said. “It went the opposite direction this time.”

“Maybe back into the house through the back door.”

“That's the way it looked all right. Maybe she already drained some poor woman of her blood, and now she’s back inside all fat and happy.”

Rafferty grabbed his phone and called headquarters. “Anything going down on the vampire killer, Marcus? If she follows her pattern, she's supposed to kill somebody tonight.” He listened to the reply and answered, “We now believe it's a woman.” He listened and continued, “Yeah. We're outside her house right now. We saw something run like a bat out of hell across the backyard, but it looked like an animal, not a person.”

He listened. Ripley kept watching the house and the yard.

“Yeah. I know sometimes they turn into wolves. Thanks for the tip.” Rafferty rolled his eyes. “Call me ASAP if the killer strikes again.”

Rafferty turned to Ripley, "Nothing so far, but they might not find a body for a day or two even if she did kill someone tonight.”

“I hate this waiting.”

“I'm going to check on her,” Rafferty said taking the wooden stake and the mallet from the bag.

“It's past eleven.”

“I don't give a shit. Keep your eyes peeled. I won't be long.”

Rafferty went to the house and knocked on the front door. He heard someone moving inside and called out, “Mrs. Montague. This is Detective Rafferty. We think the killer may strike sometime tonight, and I wanted to check to see if you're okay.”

He heard her whispery voice just beyond the door, “Or did you just stop by to see if I'm lurking about in the dark looking for warm blood?”

Damn this psycho bitch. He didn't know what to say to this.

“Cat got your tongue, Detective Rafferty?”

“Open the door, Mrs. Montague, please. We need to talk. Someone ran across the back yard. They may already be inside the house.”

“I’m afraid I'm not decent now,” she said letting the words roll off her tongue with a sultry tone any real man could understand. “You'll have to wait a few minutes while I put something on.”

Rafferty felt a strange sensation of fear and lust sweep over him. He fingered his revolver with his right hand and gripped the wooden stake with his left as his erection swelled.

“Fuck!” he spat, bewildered at the potpourri of feelings that rampaged inside of him. Somehow, this woman had sensed she had gotten to him when he'd spoken with her before. He didn't understand why, because he hadn't realized it himself until only moments ago.

The front door creaked open. He saw only darkness within.

“Mrs. Montague?” he asked hoarsely.

There was only the silence and the dark beyond the door.

He stood there, trying to get his shit together. He didn't know what he wanted to take inside, his revolver, his wooden stake, or his rock hard dick. He decided to take all three.

“Mrs. Montague?” Rafferty called out. His phone rang, and he returned the stake inside his pocket and answered it.

“Why are you just standing there, partner?” Ripley asked bewildered by Rafferty’s peculiar lack of follow-through. “Is she in there?”

“Yeah, she's in there, but she said she wasn't dressed and had to put on some clothes to let me in. Keep your eyes open. She might be up to something.”

“I got a call from Marcus. They found another body on the pier at Crystal Lake.”

Rafferty heard an odd sound along with Ripley's voice on the line.

“What's that sound, Sid?”

“You're not going to believe this, Partner. A giant bat is flapping its wings outside the passenger side window.”

“Stay put. Don’t get out of the car.” Rafferty shouted, turning back to the Crown Vic. He heard the car door open and Ripley say, "What are you doing out here? It's almost midnight.”

Then Rafferty heard the phone clattering to the ground, followed by a muffled scream, and three quick gunshots. Now the driver’s door was completely open, the interior dome light was on, but he didn’t see his partner.

Rafferty ran towards the car shouting, “Ripley! Are you okay?”

There was no answer.

As he approached the car with his gun drawn and a wooden stake in his belt, his foot stumbled over something on the pavement. He withdrew a Maglite and shone it on the body of his partner, spread-eagled on his back. Ripley had two jagged puncture wounds in his throat and a horrible shock of terror on his face. Rafferty couldn't believe it. Ripley was dead. His gun lay alongside his body on the sidewalk.

He heard Montague’s sultry voice, “You’re a miserable vampire hunter. You wouldn’t last one night in Romania. Guns are no good against a vampire.”

Rafferty turned in uncontrolled fury, and lifting his revolver, fired five rapid shots into Montague's body before she hit the ground. The left side of her head was obliterated, and blood spewed from four gaping holes spread among her ample breasts. “Looks to me like my 44 Magnum did a pretty good job on you, bitch. But why take a chance.” He extracted his wooden stake and using the butt of his gun hammered it into Montague’s heart with all the gusto he could muster.

Then, Rafferty heard the tinny shriek of a young boy behind him, “You killed my mother!” The detective turned to see a hideous, diminutive, pale-faced monster with long spidery claws and four protruding incisors dripping blood. Rafferty fired his last shot into Nigel's chest as the boy leaped upon him and gripped his throat with superhuman strength. The brat from hell sunk his teeth into Rafferty’s jugular and began sucking his life away.

The last thing the detective saw was the hole in the boy's chest magically healing itself as the wooden stake slipped through his fingers and fell with a thud to the pavement.

Rafferty hoped Sid was right about ghosts being real so he and Ripley could haunt this fucking vampire dwarf for all eternity.

BUG

Dr. Osgood Peabody had been a biology professor for thirty years at Stodgy University when it happened. Trixie Montpelier, a young, extremely sexy student, remained after class, closed the door when they were alone, and locked it. She boldly swiveled up to his desk, and pushing her ample breasts in his face, she cooed, “I notice you’ve been admiring my body the whole semester. You don’t need to deny it. It’s okay. My daddy paid a lot of money for my boob job to make me happy.”

Before Peabody could react from the shock, she pushed his chair back from the desk, flopped on his knee, and grabbed him between the legs. “This is your lucky day, Prof. Let’s go to my condo, and I’ll do things to you, you never even imagined. Some positions may even defy the laws of physics. All you have to do is give me an A in your extremely boring class. No one will be the wiser, and we’ll both get what we want.”

“Get off me this instant. I can’t believe you think a man in my position would stoop to such a thing. Not only will I dismiss you from the class, I’ll take immediate disciplinary action against you.”

After standing for a shocked moment in utter amazement she’d been rebuffed, Trixie ripped open the professor’s shirt and scratched him across the chest with her sharp, pink fingernails. “Now Dr. Peabody. What will it be? Give me an A in the class, or I will report you to Dean Uptite for soliciting sex from one of your students.”

“I'll have you know, I have been an upstanding member of the university staff for more than thirty years, Miss Montpelier. No matter what lurid story you concoct; none of my colleagues on the board will give your accusation the slightest credence. Not only will I ignore your threat, I will report your flagrant attempt at bribery to the dean myself. Hopefully you will no longer be concerned about an A in my class, you will be dismissed from the university immediately.”

To his utter dismay, the voluptuous trollop brazenly threw her arms around his neck and planted the most sensuous kiss on his lips he’d ever had and said, "We'll see, Prof, if my daddy's enormous contributions to Stodgy U. will have any bearing on the board's decision. I fear it’s you who will be leaving this staid, stuffy establishment, not me.”

Peabody winced when she stormed out and slammed the door behind her.

He picked up the phone and called Dean Uptite, his closest colleague since he began teaching at Stodgy in 1984. After listening to the lurid account, the dean said, “Don't worry, Osgood. Everyone on the board has known you for years. Your reputation is beyond reproach, and you are one of our finest educators. I can assure you no matter how much Fauntleroy Montpelier’s endowment to the university may be, there is not enough money in the world to make us compromise our decision in this matter.”

“It’s good to hear you say that,” Osgood said, overwhelmed with gratitude. “I know the university is always under the gun to maximize the alumni’s annual contributions, and Montpelier is certainly one of the biggest contributors.”

“Don’t worry, dear friend,” Uptite reassured him. “The board would never allow any conduct that undermines the reputation of our faculty and the hallowed name of Stodgy University. Miss Montpelier will be out on her ear by tomorrow afternoon, I promise you.”

The next day, Peabody received a call to come to the dean's office. He was overjoyed the board had reached a decision so quickly. He longed to get the matter behind him.

When he arrived at the administration building, the dean’s assistant, Evelyn, escorted him into the first conference room.

When he entered, he was surprised to find the dean and the four most prestigious members of the board, Maximilian Fiasco, Archibald Bromfield, Dudley Grandeur, and Cornelius Hardmeat, seated with grim faces on the opposite side of the conference table.

“Please have a seat, Osgood,” the dean said sternly.

Peabody seated himself across from the board members with his mouth agape in bewilderment.

The dean began, “We have called you here today to present our findings in regard to the accusation brought against you by Trixie Montpelier.”

“I never expected the board to meet on such a ridiculous matter of a student's attempt to bribe me into giving a grade she didn't deserve,” Peabody said curtly.

“Unfortunately, we will have to ask you to remove your tie and unbutton your shirt. Miss Montpelier claims she scratched you in the heat of passion during one of your recent nocturnal trysts.”

“One of my nocturnal trysts? I assure you I have never set foot out of the classroom with Miss Montpelier. As I indicated in my telephone conversation right after the episode, she ripped open my shirt and purposely scratched me to corroborate her story. Surely you are not taking her word against mine.”

“I'm sorry, Osgood. Fauntleroy Montpelier, Trixie's father, is a substantial contributor to the university endowment fund each year. Not only is he threatening to discontinue his generous gift, he has indicated he will press charges against you and sue the university for your flagrant misconduct.”

“My misconduct? How dare you accuse me of such a preposterous act after all my years of service to the university.”

“I'm sorry Osgood, if you won't remove your shirt, I'm afraid we will consider that an admission of guilt and be forced to take serious action against you.”

Peabody looked at his old friend, the dean, and each member of the board, who had all been his friends for so many years, like the strangers they had turned out to be. He had never felt such unmitigated hatred for human beings in his life as he felt now.

With a tear in his eye and the bitter taste of betrayal on his tongue, he said boldly, “So Montpelier‘s contributions are all you care about. This meeting is a farce and you know it. I have already been found guilty without a trial. Removing my shirt and tie has nothing to do with the outcome; you've already made up your minds.”

The members’ faces reddened and no one spoke as Peabody glared at them, then continued, “I’m sure you realize if you do this, I'll never be able to teach again. You really should have brought your daggers with you so you could stab me in the heart and put me out of my misery.”

None of the board members looked Peabody in the eye. Finally, the dean said to finalize the painful nature of the proceedings, “I'm sorry, Osgood, we have no alternative but to terminate you effective immediately. I have directed Lefty, I mean Mr. Mop to have your personal items delivered to your home.”

“I can only hope that each one of you miserable assholes will rot in hell for your despicable act against me.”

“Is that a threat?” the dean asked indignantly.

“Fuck all of you!” Peabody said, turning and leaving the room.

As he drove from the campus for the last time on his way out of town, he saw Trixie Montpelier standing with several of her classmates. She smiled broadly when she saw him passing and flipped him the bird as he went by. He felt the overpowering urge to swerve his Toyota into her and crush the life out of her, but he simply gritted his teeth and kept driving.

Peabody seethed with insane fury, hell-bent for revenge, as he headed home. His contorted face and bared teeth looked more like a savage from the African bush than the mild-mannered, turn-the-other cheek educator everyone thought they knew at Stodgy U. The professor had a dark side behind his horn-rimmed glasses and nerdy bowtie. Unknowingly, the board of sanctimonious assholes had unleashed a merciless psychopath into their community that up until now had remained dormant.

As a biology professor, Peabody had always had a peculiar and unwholesome interest in insects. He was so fascinated with certain predatory specimens; he had six of the most deadly on the planet in his home lab.

In order to enjoy witnessing what his favorite insects could do, he converted his basement into a laboratory soon after he accepted his position at Stodgy. He’d been conducting appalling experiments there all along. His basement had an outside stairway in the back of the house where he could unload test subjects without anyone seeing.

He loved to find a stray cat or dog milling about the town dump so he could lure it into his car with a piece of raw meat or tuna. Once inside, he would inject the animal with propofol, which would put it asleep in seconds. While the stray was unconscious, he transported it to his laboratory and placed it in one of his controlled enclosures. Once the animal regained consciousness, he nuked some popcorn in the microwave, poured a glass of Pepsi, and watched the voracious insects he’d chosen this time attack it.

His favorite experiment was watching his deadly army ants swarm over a living thing and devour it completely. He’d simply open a small door to allow a colony of them to feast while he enjoyed his evening snack. The thrill Peabody got from watching the ants strip every limb of the animal to the bone was almost orgasmic.

When the deed was completed, which usually took only a half an hour, he sprayed a whiff of something like ant catnip into the anthill inside the container, and the ants returned to their original nesting place.

Unfortunately, the neighbors began to complain about the caterwauling the animals made in the throes of agony at all hours of the night. The last time, they called the police and Peabody’s explanations barely satisfied the persistent cop. Consequently, Osgood had to rent a secluded cabin to conduct his experiments. The old codger, who owned the property, was happy to take cash and not ask questions to avoid paying taxes on the income. This had turned out to be a godsend. Now, the cabin was the perfect place to take his experiments to a higher level.

Since he wouldn’t be experimenting on animals this time, he had to make significant changes to the lab. It took a week for Peabody to construct an enclosure big enough and strong enough to accommodate someone as big as Cornelius Hardmeat, who was the most obese asshole of the five who had ruined him. When the work was completed, Osgood decided to start with Maximilian Fiasco, the most senior member of the board.

The very next night, Peabody waited for Fiasco to return home from a board meeting. He was on the sidewalk leading to his front porch when Osgood darted from behind an azalea bush and stuck him in the neck with the syringe.

The old reprobate gasped as Peabody held him fast until he succumbed to the anesthetic. Then, he let him fall face first. When Fiasco’s nose flattened on the sidewalk with a sickening thud, Osgood chuckled with sadistic glee. He quickly dragged him across the lawn, loaded him into his van parked in the shadows, and transported him to his cabin. Drool slobbered down Peabody’s chin as he thought of the delightful possibilities of having Maximilian all to himself in the lab.

When Fiasco came out of the stupor, he found himself strapped to a table inside a large glass enclosure. He tried desperately to escape but to no avail. Lifting his head and peering into the shadows outside the bright enclosure, he recognized Peabody seated in a chair with a bag of popcorn in his lap and a pint bottle of Pepsi.

Squinting from the blinding floodlights, he called out, "Is that you, Osgood?"

“Yes, Maximilian. I'm here, and I have a little surprise for you. I decided to use you in my latest experiment.”

“Experiment? Have you lost your mind? Let me out of here at once.”

Peabody ignored this and said, "I'm sorry. As you know, I don't take orders from you any longer. Are there any eloquent last words you want to say?”

“Can you speak louder? You know my hearing is not what it once was.”

“Don't worry, old friend, you won't have that problem after tonight.”

“What?”

“Let me write you a final message.” Peabody quickly jotted a note on a white board with a black magic marker and rolled the easel next to the glass. It read, “Fuck you, Max. I hope you rot in hell.”

Peabody pushed the button on his remote and a small door opened into the enclosure. The colony of army ants swept in covering Fiasco immediately. His agonized screams were pitifully intoxicating as the flesh melted away under the precision one-quarter inch mandibles of the ravenous ant army. It only took about an hour for every trace of flesh to be eaten away, leaving only a skeleton inside the cage.

Peabody had never enjoyed anything as much as witnessing the ants devour a human being rather than just an animal. The show was truly spectacular. He had recorded it so he could watch it whenever he chose. He couldn't wait for his next victim.

Archibald Bromfield unlocked his front door and entered the foyer. He immediately detected an odd smell in the house. Then he felt the sting in his neck.

When Archibald awoke from the propofol, he found himself strapped to a round platform inside a glass enclosure. Lifting his head, he saw Peabody moving about in a small kitchenette and heard the sound of popcorn popping.

“Osgood, what are you doing?” Bromfield shrieked.

“What does it look like, Archibald? I’m making popcorn. Don’t have a conniption. Your time will come soon enough. Why hasten your last seconds on earth, particularly when they will be unmercifully painful.”

Bromfield struggled to free himself as Peabody removed his popcorn from the microwave, picked up a can of Pepsi, and took a seat next to the glass enclosure.

“What are you going to do with me?”

“Look around, Archibald. Maybe you can guess.”

On the glass, Bromfield saw several bees buzzing about. Then, he saw a hive on a rope hanging from the top of the enclosure, level with his head.

Peabody explained, beaming, “The bees in the enclosure are Africanized honeybee's a genetic scientist named Warwick Kerr developed in Brazil in the fifties. Regular bees allow about nine seconds before they attack, and they leave you alone after you run about three hundred feet away from their hive. These bees are insanely territorial and aggressive. They attack in only one half second, and they will chase you for over half a mile while drawing thousands of other bees to sting you until you are dead.”

“Osgood! Have mercy! Don't do this!”

“Save your breath, you despicable turncoat, you made your bed, now die in it.”

Peabody picked up the remote, pushed play, and the makeshift Lazy Susan Bromfield was strapped to started to turn. His body rotated toward the dangling hive directly in his path. He struggled to avoid it, but his head crashed into it with each rotation and kept pitching it forward. Angry bees, incensed from the collisions, covered the old man like a blanket of stinging fury. Peabody couldn't believe Bromfield wouldn't die for what seemed like an eternity of gut-wrenching screams of agony. Osgood felt a momentary twinge of remorse, recalling the many luncheons they’d attended together, but quickly shrugged it off.

Once Bromfield was dead, the bees returned to their hive, now hanging motionless from the ceiling. He was almost unrecognizable as a human being since the bloating from the concentrated bee stings had made him twice his normal size. Two down and three to go.

* * *

The following evening he easily kidnapped Dudley Grandeur and transported him to the cabin. When he awoke from the anesthesia, Grandeur also found himself strapped inside the glass enclosure. Looking around, he saw about ten Japanese hornets buzzing about his head Peabody had slathered with honey. Each hornet was about three inches long and seemed to be drawn to the honey dripping from Grandeur’s head and face.

“Dudley, I'm so glad I have this final moment with you before you die. Archibald and Maximilian have already gone to hell and you will join them shortly.”

“Please, Osgood. Have mercy! The future of the university was at stake.”

“You did it to save your own ass, you miserable hypocrite.”

Peabody had already eaten far too much popcorn and drank too much Pepsi the previous evening. Tonight he would eat peanuts and wash them down with a beer. He sat on the sofa and flipped a switch that turned on a blower inside the enclosure that tossed the ten hornets around until they were raging mad.

When Peabody turned off the blower, the hornets spotted Dudley, and assuming he was responsible for the disturbance, they sprayed flesh-melting poison directly into his eyes. If he had not been in the enclosure, every other Japanese hornet in a fifty-mile radius would have come to sting him until he was dead. However, the ten hornets in the enclosure did a really nice job on Grandeur without the additional reinforcements.

When it was over, Grandeur’s eyes were black empty sockets. All the flesh on his face had melted away, leaving a skull with a head full of hair and two floppy red ears. The horrific sight curtailed Osgood's desire for more peanuts. Three down and two to go.

Later, that night, Peabody had so much trouble dragging Cornelius Hardmeat to the van in the parking lot; he had to drive across the lawn to where the unconscious professor lay in the grass. Straining as hard as he could, Peabody finally pushed the obese tub of guts inside the van enough to close the door. Dragging him into the cabin took every ounce of energy Peabody had left, but finally, the task was completed.

While Hardmeat snored blissfully away, Peabody placed two female earwigs in each ear. He rued the thought of listening to the rotund asshole begging for his life, but it would take the earwigs several hours to lay eggs and devour the inside of Cornelius' head. Since the result was only an empty skull, this experiment compared to the others would be very boring and hardly worth watching.

While he waited, Osgood stuffed a tennis ball into Hardmeat's mouth and held it in place with duct tape. After making sure he was securely bound, Peabody took off for Dean Uptite’s house at the edge of the campus.

Peabody had no trouble negotiating the dean’s lean frame into the van. When he reached the cabin, he was surprised to hear Hardmeat's muffled shrieks a considerable distance away. Apparently, the earwigs and their brood had already found the professor's pain center. When Peabody dragged the dean inside, he found Cornelius writhing pitifully in unmitigated, excruciating agony. His eyeballs were rolling around in his head like marbles.

Peabody dragged Uptite’s body on to the back porch, stripped off his clothing, and placed him in a cast iron tub with several decomposing derelict dogs from the dump. He hogtied his arms behind him and connected his feet so he couldn't get any leverage to get out of the tub that was outside on the back porch. Then, he made several slices through the dean’s arms and legs with a butcher knife and rubbed some of the gangrenous tissue into the wounds so the infection would spread quickly throughout his extremities. By tomorrow, the maggots feeding on the dead dogs would transfer into the dean's body. Then, the parasitic infestation of maggots would grow inside him and start devouring his tissue while he was still alive.

* * *

Three days later, the tub was teeming with flies and maggots. Some animals from the woods had also happened by for a snack. Uptite and Hardmeat were dead. Five down and one to go, Trixie Montpelier.

The bitch that started the problem to begin with was the hardest of all to capture. She was always with her obnoxious friends. But finally, late one night, Peabody caught her leaving a fraternity party alone and heading for her car. He had conveniently parked right behind her. As she weaved along the sidewalk toward her Porsche, reeling from a generous helping of booze and drugs, Peabody stepped out from a shrub and stabbed her with the syringe. She recognized him immediately, grabbed him by the balls, and squeezed. For a few seconds while he screamed, she kept licking his face with her long tongue until she finally lapsed into unconsciousness.

What a pig. The pathetic harlot’s redeeming social value was barely above road kill.

When Trixie awoke, she found herself in an enclosure teaming with black widow spiders that had already begun to cocoon her with webs. Peabody had injected her legs and arms with bullet ant venom, which had made them stiff and useless.

The spiders and their brood would be feasting on her for weeks. It would be a horrible way to die, but she had messed with the wrong person, Osgood Aloysius Peabody.

* * *

In the meantime, several detectives had come to question Peabody at his home about the disappearances of the board members and Miss Montpelier, but he was long gone by then. Trixie’s father had posted a million dollar reward for information leading to her safe return.

The bodies were ever recovered, and Peabody remained the only suspect. A nationwide police dragnet fueled by Montpelier’s money continued for months afterward. Peabody had disappeared from the face of the earth.

Osgood spent a considerable amount of his life savings securing a new identity and having under-the-radar plastic surgery. After a year of going under the knife, he was confident even his own mother wouldn't recognize him. He was surprised he quickly found a new teaching job at an academy three thousand miles away from Stodgy U.

Peabody knew there was always a chance someone would come along who would know he had never attended, Catholic U. in Washington DC, the university he listed in his resume. He could only cross that bridge when he came to it.

He bought a new home in a secluded wood in the country. Like his previous residence, he converted the basement, also with an outside entrance, into a lab and had already resumed his clandestine experiments.

* * *

One year later after starting his new position in the Biology department of Highbrow Academy, Peabody became extremely bored. Experimenting on stray cats and dogs from the town dump no longer presented the thrill it once had. Nothing could deliver the pulse pounding orgasmic climax he'd experienced when he tortured and killed those academic assholes at Stodgy U. The old adage, “How can you keep them down on the farm once they’ve seen Paree?” kept haunting him. He was like a man-eating tiger that had tasted human blood. He longed to feel that excitement again. The problem was the people who’d wronged him were dead. He thought about becoming another Dexter and experiment only on perverts and murderers who deserved to die, but he had no way to find such degenerates to satisfy his bloodlust.

Finally, temptation prevailed. He answered an ad in the morning paper: Private Lessons By Exotic Dancer In Your Home.

He met the young woman at an out-of-the-way restaurant. He wore a fake beard and the blond wig. She laughed when she saw his ridiculous disguise.

They went directly to a seedy motel directly across from the restaurant where Osgood paid cash. The voluptuous call girl was very young, big bosomed, and naive. As she performed every intoxicating carnal act in her bag of tricks, Peabody thought his poor heart would explode from the ecstasy. He ran up a bill he never planned to pay of over two thousand dollars worth of sexual fantasies at bargain basement prices in a single night.

As the prostitute started putting on her panties and bra, Peabody stole up behind her and stuck her with his syringe. Her eyes rolled up in her head, and she collapsed on the bed.

He dragged her to his van, transported her to his home, and dragged her into his laboratory. He felt like a child again on Christmas morning as he strapped her to the revolving platform inside the glass enclosure.

After so many hours of rip-roaring sex, he was ravenous with hunger. He went into his kitchen, placed the popcorn in the microwave, and pushed the button. While the popcorn popped, he poured some Pepsi into a large glass of ice. When the microwave beeped, he removed the popcorn and carried it and his glass of soda to a seat on the sofa overlooking the glass enclosure.

He picked up his remote knowing a new serial killer had just been born at the ripe old age of sixty-two.

What would it be tonight? Japanese hornets, army ants, black widow spiders, earwigs, botflies…. So many choices, and he would find others. And all of them delightfully entertaining and deliciously painful.

STRANGER IN THE RAIN

As Sam sat on a deck chair in the magnificent pool area facing the windows of the three thousand-room hotel, the lights went on and off like stars in the night. The sky above the enormous Majestic hotel looked foreboding. Every so often, he heard the rumble of thunder and saw flashes of lightning in the distance. The clouds covering the moon looked dark and ominous.

Looking about the pool area, he noticed only one other man sitting at a table about one hundred feet to the right. A lone beer bottle stood on the table with what appeared to be a few towels. A half an hour before, the pool area had been crowded with guests both in and out of the pool. Now, the lightning had caused them all to go inside except him. That is until the stranger across the way suddenly appeared.

Sam liked sitting in the dark. He found it invigorating to be alone with his thoughts rather than making small talk with some human vegetable. If he could glean something from a conversation that interested him, he was all right with that. On the other hand, he would rather watch paint dry than listen to someone babble about the weather, politics, or some mindless TV show. Tonight was another matter entirely. He was in no mood for company.

Suddenly the man at the table across the way rose and started walking toward him. Uh Oh, he thought. He didn't know the stranger and would probably never see him again. That in itself was a reason not to talk to him, but he didn’t feel comfortable just getting up and rushing away. That would be rude.

The stranger came right to his table, sat down, and said, "Looks like we're the only ones who haven't chosen to come in from the rain.”

“It's not raining yet,” Sam said, making dreaded small talk.

Like on cue, drops of rain started to fall. More lights in the panoramic bank of windows above went on and off sporadically.

"See. I told you so," the stranger said smiling.

“Are you a weatherman?”

“No. I'm a traveling salesman.”

“What do you want to sell me?” Sam said feigning a groan.

“I don't have my briefcase full of Fuller brushes with me right now.”

“Do they still make Fuller brushes?” Sam mused.

“I doubt it. Don’t worry, I was only joking.”

“So what do you sell?”

“If I told you what I sell, I'd have to kill you.”

They laughed at the age-old conversation piece.

“I was about to go to dinner,” the stranger said, “and I hate to eat alone. I wondered if you'd like to join me.”

“Are you gay?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really. Some of my best friends are gay,” Sam lied.

“I'm just alone, and I wondered if you wanted to join me. No strings attached.”

“I must say it's the first time a man has propositioned me like this. I guess I really don't know how to react.”

“You must be from North Jersey or New York?”

“I’ve got it. You’re a mind reader.” Sam thought the man was nice enough, and he did have charisma. He continued, “Frankly, I'm not very hungry. I don't think I can eat just yet.”

“Well, it stopped raining. If you'd rather be by yourself. I'll go.”

Sam wasn’t in the mood for chitchat, but he replied, “It's okay. I'll have dinner with you if you like, but let’s wait a little while longer.”

“I’m Jerry, and you are…?”

“Sam.”

“So what do you do for a living, may I ask?”

“Nothing. I gave my boss notice I was leaving ten days ago. He was flabbergasted. I worked for him for thirty years.”

Jerry seemed to consider this remark for an extra beat, and started drumming his fingers on the table. Then, he said, “Most people over fifty are axed as soon as there’s a downturn, but you left on your terms. Good for you, but actually, you don’t look old enough to retire.”

“Hey. You know what they say. It doesn’t take age to retire, it takes money. I’m not rich, but I saved enough to get by for the time I have left. I was tired of the debits and credits.”

“You were an accountant?”

“Yep. I was the proverbial bean counter for thirty years.”

“Accounting. That’s something I could never do. I need to be outside. Are you married?”

“Not anymore,” Sam said sadly. “My wife left me after twenty-five years of marriage. I'm adjusting to that, too. How about you?”

“I’m not married yet. I guess I never found that one girl I'm looking for, and I travel around a lot. It’s hard to have a relationship when you’re out of town so much.”

Jerry looked across the pool at the three waterfalls, momentarily lost in thought. Then he said, sounding like an expert, “Marriage can be great with the right person or hell with the wrong one. Did you have children?”

“Yeah. They live in California, and I rarely see them anymore. Enough of my boring life. What do you do when you’re not selling Fuller brushes?” Sam teased.

“So far I've worked for seven different companies. I haven't stayed with any one of them more than three years.”

“A real job hopper, huh?” Sam chided. “Does that catch up to you at some point?”

“Not so far. I've never been laid off. I guess I’m good at what I do.”

“And what is that?”

“Actually, I've tried a variety of things. Real estate, life insurance, managing restaurant franchises, the military, but what I do now is my favorite.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a series of quick lightning flashes in the foreboding sky over Disney, followed by loud claps of thunder.

“Jerry started fidgeting with the towel in his lap and asked, “So what brings you to Orlando, business or pleasure?”

“Pleasure.”

“Do you play golf?”

“No, I never got into it, but I always wanted to,” Sam said remorsefully.

“Are you going to Disney?”

“No. I've been there done that when the kids were growing up. In fact, we used to stay here at the Majestic every year when we came to visit the Parks. My son loved this pool. We'd go to the Parks in the morning and come to the pool in the afternoon.”

“So you're just taking a little trip down memory lane?”

“I guess you could say that. And what brings you to Orlando and the Majestic?”

“I'm on an assignment. My boss wanted me to take care of some loose ends. One of his employees who worked for him for a long time parted company with him. He was worried about him running off the mouth about some very private matters.”

Sam felt a pang of unease as Jerry’s friendly demeanor turned ice cold.

“And what could you do if you did find him? I mean if he no longer works for your boss.”

“I’d shut him up for good; it’s one of the things I’m good at. Of course I’d have to get him alone in a spot like this and take him out.”

“So you're a hit man. And Benny sent you to whack me? The miserable creep.”

“I guess we’re not going to dinner after all. I'm sorry, Sam, but you know too much. No one retires from the mob who knows where the money is like you do.”

“Did Benny tell you what I did when I first started working for him when I was nineteen years old?”

“No. Bennie was on vacation. He told Mort to hire me.”

Sam only wore a Speedo, and he had a white pool towel in his lap. Jerry knew he wasn't packing a gun so he was totally at ease with the situation. He could kill him anytime he wanted. “So, what did you do for Bennie when you were nineteen?”

“I was a knife thrower in my parents' circus act.” When Jerry saw the look in Sam's eyes, he went for his Luger concealed in a towel in his lap, but before his fingers even touched it, three small daggers had struck him in both eyes and the throat.

The former bookkeeper of the mafia gang lord rose from his chair, removed the three daggers from the dead man's head, and returned them to their inconspicuous sheath in his pool shoes and walked away.

Just before he reached the door to the back entrance of the hotel, it started to rain again. As he’d suspected, Benny would not let him retire and live, even though he considered him one of the dearest friends he’d ever had. In only a few days, he'd had Mort send one of his goons to take care of him, and he knew there would be others.

When he reached his hotel suite on the top floor, he went directly to the mini-bar and poured three small bottles of vodka into a glass. He took it out on the balcony overlooking the enormous pool area like he had with his family so many times. He'd always loved staying at this hotel with his wife when his son was in middle school. Their vacations had been the happiest times of his life.

Dr. McCabe had told him last week he’d be lucky to live ten more days. That's when he gave notice to Bennie. He didn’t tell his old friend he was dying, only that he’d decided to retire. He’d had enough of debits and credits with only ten days to live.

He’d known no one retired from the gang once they knew as much is he did. But he hoped his relationship with Bennie would be strong enough to make a difference. Just in case, he’d gone to the pool area and sat alone to see if someone would come along.

He’d didn’t expect Bennie would send a sniper. It wasn’t his style. He figured he would send a goon who would be up close and personal, and he was right. Sam hadn’t been worried. He never went anywhere without his knives since he learned to throw them.

He took a long pull of vodka and looked down at the tables in the pool area thirty floors below where the man who came to kill him sat alone in the rain.

He was feeling woozy as he finished his drink, climbed up on a chair, and then, transferred to the balcony railing.

He was a great knife thrower, but he'd never been an acrobat like his father and mother. He'd always been afraid of heights as he teetered atop the railing. But it would only be for another second or two….

CONVERTIBLE BANDITS

Ralph grimaced and Lena groaned when the four lanes separated by a median became only two lanes. The occasional defunct motel or boarded up gas station had disappeared. Now they only saw weeds and standing water along the shoulder on both sides of the road.

“You’ve done it again, Ralph. You've taken a shortcut off the main highway, and now we’re lost and low on gas.”

“The guy at the convenience store said we could save forty minutes taking this shortcut,” Ralph explained.

“But you may have taken the wrong road at the Y five-mile's back.”

“He said go right at the Y.”

“Are you sure?”

They saw a small frame house badly in need of a coat of paint back from the road in the distance on the right with smoke curling from the chimney.

“Hey, there's a house,” Ralph said, pointing into the woods up ahead. “If we run out of gas, I'll walk back here and use their phone to call AAA.”

“If they own a phone. Remember we’re deep in the boonies.”

“Well, people do live out here. We're not totally alone if something unexpected happens.”

“That last sign said Nowhere, ten miles.” Lena said, staring dejectedly into the vast wilderness of endless forest that surrounded them. We must've driven twenty miles by now.”

“I don't think so. The turn is probably right around this next bend.”

“I hope so. We need gas, and I need to pee.” She squinted at the lone structure through the trees as they passed it “You know that house sure seems familiar.”

“I think we passed one like it awhile back.”

“No, Ralph. We didn’t pass one like this before, and I have a weird premonition I've been in that house.”

“Have you suddenly become clairvoyant?”

“No, but I can visualize the rooms inside.”

“Come on. How can you say that?” Ralph teased. “You know it's impossible. Neither one of us has ever been in Texas before. And we're never going to be here again if I have anything to say about it.”

“I don't know. I have a funny feeling we’ve been here before and we’ll be here again.”

As they continued to drive further on the two-lane highway, instead of running into the four-lane they came to the end of the asphalt and a dead end with three huge boulders in the middle of the road.

“Whoa, Ralph! Now we know we’re going wrong.”

Ralph scratched his head. It was cloudy and a few drops of rain splattered the windshield.

He had very little room to turn around, but he negotiated it. The shoulder ran precipitously off on both sides of the road. They saw a valley below and a mountain stream.

“I don't understand this. We never saw terrain like this on the way in. It's like we went through a portal in the Twilight Zone.”

“Don't get creepy on me. Just keep your eyes on the road. We don't want to miss the turn this time. It must be hard to see for some reason.”

In the distance standing at the edge of the road, they saw a hitchhiker with his thumb in the air. He wore a black sweat suit with a hood shrouding his face.

“Where did he come from?” Lena asked with a dumbfounded look. “He wasn’t there a minute ago when we came by.”

“Who knows, but we can ask him which way to go.”

“Thank God. I was really worried something prehistoric might come stomping out of the underbrush.”

When they reached the figure in black and pulled the car passed him on the right shoulder, they caught a glimpse of a white skull face inside the hood and did a double take. Turning back to get a better view of the nonsensical image they thought they had seen, the figure was gone.

“What the hell?” Ralph gasped backing up a few car lengths. “Where did he go?”

“Something’s not right here,” Lena said. “Did you see what I just saw?”

“I don't know what you saw, but I saw a skeleton in a black sweat suit trying to thumb a ride, and then he disappeared into thin air.”

“Then I'm not going crazy,” Lena said. “That's what I saw.”

Ralph stopped the car, and they both got out. By the side of the road, they saw four weather-beaten small crosses almost covered with weeds. Someone had placed a gray board against a small pile of rocks for a headstone. The words on it were barely visible. Two Families Crashed At The Y-1959. No One Knows Why.

Then they noticed another arm of the Y meeting the one they were on.

“When we came by here the first time, I didn't see these crosses, Ralph.”

“Neither did I.”

“Where did the hitchhiker go?”

“He must've darted into the bushes when we passed him.”

“How could he do that without us seeing him?” Lena said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“I don't know. Maybe he dove on the ground in the weeds and crawled away.”

“Why was he wearing a mask?”

“You ask too many questions I can’t answer,” Ralph replied, peering into the dense forest surrounding them.

“The flowers on the grave are fairly new. Maybe the people in that house we saw placed them here. There's no one else around for miles.”

“Are we having some kind of nightmare? This can't be happening.”

“I must be having the same nightmare,” Lena said biting her fingernail to the quick. “I'm seeing what you're seeing, and it’s really fucked up.”

“Let's go to the house we saw. Maybe someone there can tell us what happened here.”

They returned to their 1958 Skylark convertible and drove back to the frame house, following the gravel driveway about one hundred feet from the road to the house.

In the carport to the right, they saw a sleek futuristic automobile. The design was unlike anything they had ever seen before.

“What kind of car is that?” Ralph asked, searching his memory bank for a clue. “It's so small, there's no room to make out in the backseat when you go to a drive-in. And what's happened to the chrome and the wide whitewall tires? And look at the shitty hood ornament. This must really be a stripped down model.”

“Have you ever heard of a Toyota Lexus?”

“No. It must be a new import, maybe Japanese. Who would buy a car like that? It probably cost a fortune to repair.”

“Enough of this nonsense about the car.” Lena climbed the three steps up to the porch and knocked on the front door.

Ralph noticed a newspaper lying on the porch swing. He’d never seen a newspaper so thin, and he noticed it cost $.50. What was the world coming to? His eyes bugged out when he saw the date August 3, 2014.

“Hey, Lena, look at this.” Lena turned from the door and joined Ralph at the swing. He pointed to the date on the newspaper. She gasped.

A middle-aged woman suddenly opened the front door, took out a key, and locked it.

“Excuse me, ma'am,” Lena said. “We're lost. Can you tell me where the closest gas station is?”

The woman looked their way, tried to remember if she’d forgotten something, and headed in the direction of the carport.

“Excuse me ma'am,” Lena said almost shouting, but the woman ignored her, walked past the carport, and disappeared around the corner of the house.

Shortly afterward, they heard the roar of an engine start up. In a few moments, the woman reappeared driving a huge bulldozer with an elongated steel blade instead of the normal bucket. She goosed the accelerator and sped into the driveway leading to the highway. Just before reaching the asphalt, she backed behind a huge hedge so no one could see her from the road.

“What was wrong with her?” Ralph asked totally perplexed. “Was she deaf?“

“I don't think so. And if she’s driving a bulldozer, she's not blind. And for some reason, she didn't see us.”

“What the fuck is happening? Everything is weird. Maybe we did just step into the Twilight Zone.”

They crept closer under cover of the trees to see what the woman was up to. In the distance, they heard an automobile approaching from the left. Suddenly the dozer roared to life and accelerated diagonally into the road. They watched in horror as the steel blade struck the speeding convertible just above the wipers on the passenger-side and tore through the windshield like a knife through butter shaving off the top in one motion. The small yellow car drifted out of control across the road, then, it struck several enormous boulders head on. The hood folded up like an accordion and steam poured out.

Ralph and Lena crept closer for a better view and peeked through the underbrush behind the sign. The woman jumped down from her seat atop the dozer with a rifle dangling by her side. As she strode toward the wreckage, the decapitated driver lurched back and forth like a chicken with his head cut off, blood spurting from the gaping hole in his neck.

The passenger side door, already partially open and hanging askew, abruptly flew wide open, and a female slid out onto the asphalt. Blood spewed from the empty socket of her missing arm as she cried out pitifully, “Help me! Please!”

A bullet to the head from the rifle of the dozer’s driver answered her pleas. The killer’s face remained expressionless as she dragged the woman she had just killed back to the open door and lifted her inside like a sack of potatoes. She went to the other side, picked up the driver’s head from the ground, and pitched it into the backseat like a large cantaloupe.

Not skipping a beat, she returned to the dozer, backed it closer to the wreckage, and pulling a chain from the rigging, attached it to the undercarriage and hoisted up the front end. Ralph and Lena watched in awe as she towed the yellow Kia into the woods behind her house. Afterward, the woman returned to the porch, unlocked the door, and went inside for a few minutes.

Ralph and Lena waited, and finally the stone cold killer came out and took a seat on the porch with a can of beer and a bag full of something called Doritos. While she read the newspaper and had her snack, Ralph and Lena sneaked around back to take a look.

A graveyard of decapitated convertibles all stripped of everything salable for junk littered the property as far as they could see. Toward the back, they recognized the license plate on their mutilated 1958 Skylark convertible.

Ralph whispered to Lena as they peered at the woman through a stand of bushes, “She’s been killing people for over fifty years.”

“That's impossible. She's not that old. She must be a second or third generation killer.”

“In all those years, you would think someone would stumble upon the auto graveyard and blow the whistle by now.”

“Remember, Ralph, this road isn't on the map, and it’s a dead end that doesn't lead anywhere. The man at the convenience store must be in on it.”

“That old geezer. That's incredible. He didn't look like a psychopath to me.”

“Did you see the way that woman shot the poor lady in the head. She didn't show the slightest bit of emotion. She is a stone cold killer and the convenience store guy must be just like her.”

Ralph winced. “I guess buying that convertible wasn't such a great idea after all. That's what they’re targeting with their death machine.”

Lena started to cry. “You don’t need to whisper, Ralph, the psycho bitch can’t hear or see us anyway. We’re dead.”

“So we must be ….”

“Ghosts, Ralph. That’s why the woman didn’t see us. And there's one more thing you’ve forgotten. It's 2014. You saw the old geezer over fifty years ago. The couple these maniacs slaughtered was living right now. You saw the yellow car they driving. It didn't look anything like our ‘58 Skylark.”

“They killed us on August 3 1959, and this is the anniversary of our deaths. We're haunting this place today for some reason.”

Lena pressed in on her chest, felt her arm, and said, “I don't feel like a ghost. Let's try something. Follow me.”

She saw patio doors leading into the basement from the back yard. With Ralph tagging along, she walked up to the back door and announced, “Here goes.” She proceeded to walk right through the wall and didn't feel a thing. Ralph closed his eyes and followed close behind. They descended the basement stairs. The only light was a nightlight plugged into a receptacle on the wall, but somehow, they could see in the dark better than when they were alive.

Immediately they recognized the basement was a torture chamber. They saw two metal tables with leather straps positioned where a person’s arms and legs would be and an enormous vice big enough for a head to fit in.

They saw rows of shackles hanging from the ceiling and a table filled with scalpels, drills, saws, and other tools.

“Ralph, sometimes these people don't kill their victims right away.”

“I wonder what they did with us.”

“Like I said before, I remember this house. Apparently not as a guest but as a victim.”

“Do you remember them using these horrible things on you?”

Lena cringed. “Thankfully, no.”

“What are we going to do?”

“What can we do? We're ghosts. We haunt and lurk. That's about it.”

Ralph pondered over what Lena had said and shook his spectral head, “Today is the anniversary of our deaths. We must be here for some special reason. We weren’t here yesterday, I don’t think.”

An eerie voice whispered, “Your spirits cannot rest. You are consumed with anger and must seek revenge. You cannot go to the other side until the wrong is righted.”

“Who are you?” Lena said in the direction of the voice. “Did these psychos kill you, too?”

“No. I died in this house over one hundred years ago. My name is Harriet. I am at peace on the other side, but part of my spirit will always linger here.”

“Are there others like you?”

“Yes. There are many here in the shadows of the basement suffering.”

“Can you help us reach the other side?”

“No. You must seek the help of others like you. Most of their spirits are out on the road where they were killed by the machine. The rest are here where they were tortured like you.”

“I don't see anyone,” Ralph said. Immediately, they heard a low drone emanating all around them.

Suddenly, Lena traveled back in time to the day they were murdered in 1959. They were in the car driving. It was raining hard.

“Don't you think you should pull over? I can't see a thing, can you?” Lena said angrily.

“I can see, but I hope I didn't miss the turn. The guy at the convenience store told me to go right at the Y in the road.”

“I wish you would stop taking shortcuts and asking people for directions, it never pans out.”

“The man said I could save almost an hour going this way.”

“Slow down for Christ sake. How's the gas?”

Ralph took his eye off the road for a split second to look at the gas gauge. Then he saw a huge billboard of a seminude couple in the throes of passion on the left side of the road. Both sat spellbound as Ralph slowed to get a better look. Neither of them had never seen such a blatantly risqué image on a public road.

“Whoa!” Ralph shouted, “That’s the coolest sign I’ve ever seen.” Then from the opposite side of the road, a bulldozer with a gleaming steel blade shot from behind some thick bushes. Ralph swerved away, but it was too late. The blade struck him in the side of the head with a lethal skull-crushing blow and sliced through the convertible top, separating it entirely from the car. The blade completely missed Lena's head, and the car continued hurtling forward into a stand of huge boulders. The front end of their car folded up from the impact, but Lena’s seatbelt kept her safe from the collision. Except for a few scratches, she was dazed but not hurt.

She looked over at Ralph and saw his dead open eyes and his lopsided head. Then she felt a crushing blow to the back of her head, and the world went black.

Suddenly, Lena returned to the present as a ghost. The horrific images of the past filled her with anger. Ralph saw the look on her face darken.

“What did you see, Lena?”

“I saw the wreck that killed you. I saw your eyes and the terrible dent in the side of your head. They decoyed us to look one way at a large sign and then pile-drived our car with a similar bulldozer like the one we saw today and sliced off the top of our car.”

“What happened to you?”

“I wasn't killed in the crash. They brought me here. The geezer in the convenience store had a fetish for inflicting pain. He kept burning me with an iron until I died.”

“An iron?”

“He loved to hear me scream. He placed the hot iron against my skin while I was strapped to the metal table and let it sizzle. When I passed out, he waited until I regained consciousness to start again.”

“I'm so sorry, Lena. I guess having my head crushed in was a better way to go.”

“I don't know why, but coming into this house and revisiting the anger inside of me has changed me somehow. I feel like I can move mountains and scale tall buildings in a single bound like Superman. On second thought, at least like Wonder Woman.”

“I’m mad as hell myself, but I still feel the same as I did outside,” Ralph said.

Lena moved across the room and switched on the light.

“How did you do that? You’re a ghost.”

The eerie voice came again, “You are energized in this room because you died here along with many others. You are absorbing the energy of all those lost souls who yearn to reach the other side. Even the ones outside on the road are energizing you some.”

“I don't understand,” Lena said hoping for some answers.

“You've been wandering for years traveling the same road and crashing your car repeatedly in the same location. Coming inside the house where you were tortured and killed is making the difference now. You don't remember all the crashes through all the years, and you won't remember coming into the house today if you linger here and don't reach the other side this time. You've been given a chance very few spirits ever get, and you need to make it count.”

* * *

Jack Rogers closed the convenience store at ten o'clock, which wasn't very convenient for the citizens of Nowhere, but he didn't give a shit. His additional income from robbing travelers who drove convertibles was better now than ever. He prided himself on picking the perfect victims. He particularly like the ones with pretty wives, but sometimes the bulldozer blade decapitated both people. He didn't always get to torture the women like he wanted. Sometimes the man would survive, and Ethel would have a little fun pulling his chain. She loved to break all their fingers and toes. Jack never understood this fetish, but that's what she liked, and he left her alone with them. Ethel was much better at torturing travelers than her mother had ever been.

His daddy taught him well. So far, no one had suspected a thing. His family had owned thousands of acres for seventy-five years, and as luck would have it, a new highway had made the old road that went through their property obsolete years ago. The county no longer maintained the road, which made it easy to lure unsuspecting travelers on to it without being caught. The only downside was it meant he occasionally had to patch a pothole whenever they arose to make his victims believe this was a state road.

When Jack Rogers pulled into the driveway leading to the house, he wondered why all the lights were off. Did Ethel take a nap and fall asleep? Maybe she was tired from killing those two people earlier that afternoon. She wasn't as spry as she used to be. She hadn’t mentioned anything out of the ordinary had happened today. The man's head was decapitated and the woman, who had lost her arm, was bleeding out when Ethel shot her in the head. Apparently, this couple had a lot of cash in their wallets, and everything turned out well.

He climbed the steps to the front door, opened it, and walked in. Before he could switch on the light, Lena hit him squarely between the eyes with a Louisville slugger. Jack fell with a thud on his face. Lena dragged him into the basement and strapped him on another table next to Ethel. He started to come to and Lena helped wake him up by squeezing his balls with some heavy-duty pliers.

Lena could feel the excitement building as the spirits that lurked in the shadowy netherworld surrounded the two human monsters.

Both Jack and Ethel were awake, but they couldn't see the spectral things that drooled in the shadows. Their eyes were bulging with fear. They could sense something terrible lurking nearby.

Ralph came forward from the rest and asked, ”What's the plan, Lena?”

“Before we begin, we want everyone to concentrate as hard as they can to materialize so that Ethel and Jack can see the victims they tortured one last time before they burn in hell for all eternity. I think it will make their final moments in excruciating agony even more unpleasant.”

“I like it,” Ralph said excitedly. “But do you think we can do it?”

Harriet says if all of us put our minds to it all at once, we have the power. On the count of three, I want everyone to concentrate as hard as you can to materialize looking the way you looked the last time Ethel, Jack, or their parents saw them. 1…2…3….”

Suddenly hazy figures materialized from the dark and emerged into the light in a frenzied calliope of moaning, shrieking, and hysterical laughter.

Even Ralph and Lena winced as they looked around at the grotesque assembly of monstrosities created by Jack, Ethel, and their ancestors over a period of more than fifty years.

One by one, the spectral things, sporting a potpourri of missing body parts, shambled forward, drooling with anticipation, and clamoring for Lena to begin meting out justice with the diabolical implements on the table.

PANDORA’S BOX

Zack and Pandora had met for dinner at the Manhattan Ocean Club exactly one year ago. To celebrate the anniversary of their first date, they'd decided to dine at the same restaurant where they’d fallen in love.

Over the course of the year, neither had chosen to date anyone else. They were madly in love, and Zack had decided it was time to pledge his love and devotion with an engagement ring.

After an exquisite meal of surf and turf, Zack withdrew a small gift box from his jacket and placed it on the table in front of Pandora. She smiled warmly and opened it. The diamond sparkled in the candlelight of their secluded table overlooking the water and the reflections of the city lights.

Zack moved to her side, and getting down on one knee, he said with deep emotion, "Pandora, I love you with all my heart, and I want to share my life with you for now and forever more. Will you marry me?”

Pandora’s radiant smile faded, and her brow creased with a surprising shadow of concern.

“What is it, darling?” Zack asked, stunned at the unexpected reaction to his proposal.

“I love you more than life itself, and I do want to share my life with you. But, I made a promise to my father when I was a young girl that I must hold sacred without compromise all my life. So, before I commit my love to you for all eternity, you must swear never to ask me about or ever try to interfere with my promise of secrecy to my father.”

“I don't understand, darling. What on earth could be so important it would stand in the way of the love we feel for each other?”

“I can't say any more than what I've told you. If you want me to be your wife, you must promise to keep the secret until death do us part.”

“But…”

“Zack, do you hear what I’m saying? There is no alternative. You must agree to this one condition or this will have to be the last time we ever see each other.”

Zack looked at her in awe. Pandora is giving me an ultimatum. Not only for our marriage, but also for our future relationship.

“Well, if you put it that way,” he said. “Of course, I promise to never mention your secret, whatever it is, ever again. My love is unconditional.”

"I'm so happy," Pandora said. "I love you so much. I knew you would understand.”

He placed the ring on her finger. They kissed tenderly.

* * *

Three months later, Zack and Pandora were married. It was a beautiful ceremony and a fairy tale reception with all their friends.

After a ten-day honeymoon in Hawaii and upon their return to Manhattan, Pandora gave up her apartment on Riverside Drive and moved into Zack's luxury apartment on Park Avenue.

Zack was a successful lawyer who worked for Broadback, Milhouse, & Rangoon. Pandora was a prominent plastic surgeon with her own practice.

Shortly after moving in to Zack’s apartment, Pandora made several modifications to Zack’s more masculine decor, which he agreed to out of love.

They were extremely happy as the days, weeks, and months passed in a whirlwind of activity.

“About six months after their marriage, one evening after dinner while watching TV, Pandora asked Zack, "Do you have a safe deposit box for important papers?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”

“I have a box I would like to put in it for safekeeping if it's big enough.”

“The one I have at Chase is certainly big enough, but you could probably put it in the safe in the den. It's gigantic and it's fireproof. It would be safe there as well unless the whole building is hit by a 747 like the Trade Center.”

“I'd prefer to place it off site, if you don't mind.”

“What's in the box?” Zack asked inquisitively.

“Remember the secret I mentioned the night you proposed?”

“Of course, I remember.”

“The box is my secret. I can never tell you what's in it, and you must never ask me about it or ever try to open it. And if I die, you must bury it with me unopened.”

“Wow. A real mystery wrapped in a puzzle. Can't you give me a hint? Like, is it animal or plant…bigger than a bread box?”

“I can't say. It's a secret.”

Zack was annoyed by the secrecy surrounding the strange box, but understood he’d made a promise on the night he proposed, and he intended to keep his word.

“Is the box here in the apartment?”

“Yes. It's on the floor in my walk-in closet.”

“Can I see it?”

Pandora thought about this and finally relented. She disappeared for a moment and returned with the small black box about nine inches square, which she placed on the coffee table.

After scrutinizing it for a while, Zack said, “Looks about the size of a Jack-in-the-Box. Does something jump out at you when you open it?”

“It's a secret.”

“Well, I can put it in the safe in the den or in the safe deposit box at the bank. It's your choice, darling,”

“I'd prefer the safe deposit box. It will be less of a temptation.”

“You don't think I'd break my promise to you, do you?”

“No, but why tempt fate anymore than necessary?”

* * *

Five years passed. The honeymoon was over. Life had lost some of its erotic luster, but Zack and Pandora had sex more than most couples who'd been together more than five years.

One day, while browsing through an accumulation of mail, Zack inadvertently opened a bank statement addressed to Pandora. He first thought it must be for someone else since the person had a balance in excess of six million dollars. But looking at it closer, he was shocked to discover it was in fact Pandora’s account.

They had never discussed finances since both made handsome salaries and paid their own bills separately. After Pandora moved in, Zack continued to pay for utilities, telephone, and cable for their apartment. He also picked up the tab for meals, drinks, and entertainment when they went out. Other than these expenditures, they each paid their own bills and neither had ever mentioned a shortage of cash. However, the magnitude of the funds in Pandora’s account had aroused Zack’s curiosity, and he found it odd she’d never mentioned she was a multimillionaire. He returned the statement to its envelope and left it on the kitchen counter.

The next morning, Zack noticed the envelope was gone. Pandora had found it and filed it away. During breakfast, they made small talk, but she never mentioned she knew he had opened her mail.

* * *

As more time passed, Zack became increasingly curious about where his wife had gotten the money in her account. He secretly started investigating her past.

He had assumed Pandora had never been married before, but to his chagrin, he discovered she’d been married at least twice before. Both husbands had contracted a strange malady their doctors had been unable to diagnose and died a short time after contracting it.

Further investigation revealed Pandora was much older than she appeared. But, try as he may, he couldn’t pin down much of anything else about her past. The trail of her parents, her birth, and her childhood was a black hole that led nowhere. Zack could find nothing before she attended college at Stanford University. He assumed her identity must have been fabricated. There was no other plausible explanation.

Aside from quite a few evening meetings she had to attend because of her job, there was nothing else suspicious about their relationship. Zack dearly loved Pandora, but he could not go on living with a mystery woman without a past. He was convinced the black box held the secret.

Finally, one day instead of going to work, he took a taxi to the bank where he’d placed the box. He went to the safety deposit boxes, entered the combination into his, opened the door, and extracted the black box. He took it to a private viewing room and pondered what he would do next. He didn’t have the combination.

He scrutinized the five numbers, which now were set at 6-8-4-2-3. He entered 1-2-3-4-5, 9-8-7-6-5, and every combination of birthdays, anniversaries, etc he could think of, but nothing worked. The box was locked. Moreover, it was made from an alloy he had never seen before. He couldn’t scratch or dent it no matter how hard he tried.

After almost an hour of getting nowhere, he was about to give up when he remembered a set of luggage he’d purchased years before with a similar rollup combination. He couldn’t find the combination in the paperwork and had wasted a lot of time trying different numbers. Finally, someone told him all combinations were always set at 0-0-0-0-0, and you put in the five numbers you wanted, and that became your combination from that point on.

Almost certain it would be futile, he entered 0-0-0-0-0, and the lock popped open.

Immediately, a deep feeling of guilt swept over him as he looked at a camera above him and knew it was making a recording of everyone who entered the room.

He opened the box. He found a note inside that read:

I am a vampire.

I have searched the known world for a soul mate for over five centuries. During that time, I have become a widow twenty-five times. No man I have married has been able to keep the secret they swore to keep the day they proposed to me. Like the others, you broke your promise and opened the box holding my secret.

I love you, but you must die.

Suddenly the letters on the note faded and then disappeared completely. Zack held a blank sheet of paper in his hands. Immediately, he felt a strange feeling come over him as if someone else had taken control of his mind.

He concentrated with all his might to combat this strange feeling, and after a time, he believed he had successfully overcome the pull of its dominating power over him. He balled up the note and threw it into a trashcan.

Then, he placed the empty box in his suit pocket, left the room, and returned to the sidewalk outside teeming with people. Rush hour had already begun in Manhattan.

He walked directly to a loading zone in the middle of the block and waited for a large delivery truck to come. He didn’t know why. Finally, he saw one rounding the corner and come barreling toward him. He heard Pandora’s voice resonating in his mind. He felt her will enveloping him. In his mind, he heard her speaking to him telepathically, "When the truck comes, leap in front of it, and die.”

* * *

When Pandora entered their apartment later that afternoon, she was sad and deeply depressed as she always was each time she had to kill her spouse for breaking their promise. But this time, the depression was worse than ever before. She had loved Zack far more deeply than she had loved any of the others. She decided she would wait a few decades to begin her quest to find husband number twenty-seven.

The first thing she noticed was the black box on the kitchen counter.

How did it get here? She had assumed the delivery truck had obliterated it when it squashed her hubby. There were other boxes in her inventory; she didn’t need the one Zack had opened. No one in five hundred years had escaped her spell when she commanded them to commit suicide.

She went to the box and found it unlocked. She raised the lid, found a note just like the one she put and the box for Zack, and opened it. She couldn't believe the words written in scarlet on the paper:

You're not the only one with a secret, Darling. I’m a vampire, too.

Zack stepped into the room, beaming from ear to ear with a smile and holding two goblets of blood. When he saw her lips part and her canines protrude over her red tantalizing tongue, he realized he was ravenous. He could tell Pandora was ravenous, too.

He placed the goblets on the table, and flew into Pandora’s arms, meeting her in midair. With reckless abandon, they began ravaging each other and drinking each other's blood like dogs in heat. This nectar would be an appetizer to keep them satisfied until they could prowl for a more substantial dinner later tonight. Sex would be their low cal dessert for the evening.

Zack said, “Thank the gods, Pandora. Now we can finally dispense with the masquerade and move our coffins into the master bedroom so we can finally get a good day’s sleep.”

THE MONSTER NEXT DOOR

There it was again. Jacob heard the familiar bone chilling maniacal laugh through the paper-thin walls of his apartment. No, not exactly a laugh. More like a diabolical hyena-like giggle of a deranged maniac getting his jollies snipping someone’s fingers off with garden shears. Jacob had never heard a human being utter such a depraved, vulgar sound.

He had no proof, but he was convinced Grover Mantz, his next-door neighbor, was not human. He had marveled at his stoic expressionless face for five years. He was sure he wore a mask and a toupee to conceal the secret horror beneath. Jacob was cursed with a sixth sense, which manifested frightful images of ghosts and evil spirits that haunted his nightmares and contributed to his prolonged, acute insomnia.

Along with several ghosts of dead relatives, Grover Mantz was a frequent boogeyman that caused Jacob to wake up screaming almost every night. Sometimes he saw Grover as an alien with big eyes, big ears, and green scales over his entire body. In other dreams, he saw him as a black, hairy monster with a crocodile mouth and shark teeth. The gruesome incantations of both creatures made his blood run cold. But the recent monstrosity with red glowing eyes and a hellish tongue darting in and out of its mouth like a black serpent was the final straw. Jacob never had a restful night’s sleep after that, and he feared for his sanity. He knew he would have a breakdown if he didn’t do something soon to stop these horrific nightmares.

Jacob didn’t know why he was the only one in the apartment building who could see through Grover’s disguise. When he mentioned his suspicions to the other residents, they rolled their eyes and scurried away from him. He even called the police several times, but they also considered him a crackpot with a screw loose. Whenever he mentioned the alien thing, or the beast with a crocodile mouth and shark teeth, the officer on duty would either hang up or threaten to send someone to take him away in a straitjacket if he didn’t stop calling.

Jacob remembered the first couple of years after Grover moved next door to him. He was painfully shy and rarely came out of his apartment. He even had his groceries delivered by a messenger during that period. But about three years ago, Grover suddenly came out of his shell. That's when Jacob noticed the way he shambled along dragging his left foot rather than walking like a human. It wasn’t long after Grover started taking midnight strolls that Jacob noticed an unpleasant smell whenever Grover opened his door to get his newspaper. It was a dank, graveyard kind of smell like mildew, fresh earth, and spoiled meat. Why would such an overpowering stench suddenly emanate and linger in a first-floor apartment?

Along with the growing list of peculiar occurrences and idiosyncrasies surrounding his neighbor, Jacob cringed each time he heard Grover’s fiendish laugh. It grated on his nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. He also noticed an odd fluttering late at night in the spring and fall when he left his windows open rather than running the air conditioning. It sounded like the bats in the belfry at the church on the corner, but, try as he may; he never saw what caused it.

Grover was a night owl. He only went walking after the sun went down, usually at midnight. Jacob assumed he slept during the day like a vampire. Maybe he slept in a coffin filled with earth from the grave, which could explain the ungodly smell.

Jacob’s obsession with every move Grover made had taken its toll on him, and because none of the residents knew or cared about the monster who lived in their very building, he was disturbed to the point of madness.

Finally, when Margret Winston’s cat disappeared, Jacob decided it wouldn’t be long before Grover would come to do God knows what to him or one of his neighbors. Since the police would not intervene, he knew it was up to him to take the law into his own hands.

Two nights later, after listening to the water dripping from a leaky faucet in his bathtub for three agonizing hours, Jacob snapped. He leapt from his bed and began to tear out the last strands of his comb over. He went to the kitchen to get what he needed. At three o'clock in the morning, he stormed out of his apartment and began to pound on Grover’s door.

He knew Grover was awake because his TV was blaring as always. It wasn’t long before Jacob heard him dragging his foot across the carpet, and he saw an eyeball in the peephole of Grover’s front door. He heard the monster’s insidious voice, “Is that you, Jacob?”

“Of course, it's me, Grover. Open the door. We need to talk.”

“Is my TV too loud?”

“No. The TV is fine. Open up.”

The door opened a crack, and Grover peered out. “What do you want at three o’clock in the morning? Have you lost your mind?”

Without warning, Jacob pushed the door open, grabbed Grover by the shoulders, and dragged him kicking and screaming into the hall. He struck his nemesis in the face with a vicious elbow, knocking Grover completely off his feet onto the floor. Jacob pounced on top of him, and withdrawing a huge butcher knife he had placed in his belt behind his back, he plunged it into Grover's chest to the hilt again and again. Grover shrieked in pain, his eyes widening with sheer terror. He threw his hands up trying to ward off Jacob's frenzied attack.

Jacob ignored everything and continued to plunge the knife into Grover's chest and stomach again and again. Blood spurted in all directions and pooled in a big circle under Grover’s writhing body in the hallway. Jacob's neighbor on the opposite side from Grover burst into the hall in his pajamas with his face red with anger yelling, “What the fuck is going on here?” But, after seeing the hall redecorated with Grover’s blood, he darted back inside, slammed the door, and announced, “I’m calling the police!”

Two other doors opened in the hall, and two more neighbors popped their heads out. They stood spellbound at the murder taking place before their eyes. But not wanting to get killed or involved, they also slammed their doors and called the police.

Finally, Grover stopped struggling after eighteen stab wounds to the chest and stomach. Jacob didn't know if the butcher knife would do the job on an alien, but apparently, the hairy monster had succumbed to his prolonged attack. He was somewhat surprised at how easily he had ridden the human race of the horrible thing living next door.

Jacob knew the police would arrive at any moment. He would soon have to prove once and for all Grover was a monster, and he wore a disguise to hide his secret identity. He grabbed a hank of Grover's hair and tried to yank off his toupee. But, to his surprise and chagrin, it wouldn’t budge. He grabbed the flesh beneath Grover’s chin and attempted to pull away the elaborate mask to reveal the black hairy face or the green alien skin underneath, but it was on too tight. Jacob couldn't find a ridge he could get his fingers under for leverage. In a last ditch attempt to prove Grover was indeed a monster, Jacob ripped open Grover’s tattered, bloodstained pajama top and was flabbergasted to see a normal human chest with a myriad of ugly stab wounds. How could this be happening? Grover’s disguise was awesome, and he couldn’t crack it.

Jacob heard the sirens approaching in the street, and then the sound of loud voices at the front door. He heard the buzzer. Someone in one of the apartments had pushed the button to unlock the outside door.

Two uniformed officers burst into the hallway with their side arms at the ready. Jacob looked at them in horror, knowing they would assume he had murdered his next-door neighbor for no reason. He rose from the bloody body and turned toward them, begging them to understand, “I did it to save mankind. I’ve never hurt a fly.” Jacob ranted, brandishing the knife in sweeping arcs like someone on a debate team trying to make a point. ”Grover Mantz was a monster,” he shrieked. “You must believe me. I have a sixth sense, which allowed me to see and feel the evil inside of him.”

Both police officers stood their ground. One shouted, “Drop the knife now and place your hands on the wall. I won’t tell you again.” Both officers removed their side arms from their holsters and pointed them at Jacob.

Jacob was too distraught to comprehend what the officer was saying as he shrieked and continued to wield the knife like a maniac. “Grover was a monster I tell you. He wore a disguise. Sometimes his face was hairy like a gorilla. He had a crocodile mouth and shark teeth. Sometimes he had green skin and monstrous eyes the size of dinner plates. He was hideous. I had to stop him for the sake of all of us.”

“Don't come any closer. Stand down this instant or I’ll have no choice, but…” the young policeman shouted.

Jason continued to shriek, “But when I saw the red glowing eyes, and the black tongue shoot from his mouth like a snake, I knew he was the devil himself.” He lunged forward, pleading, “Officer, I’m a hero, not a murderer.”

The officers emptied their clips into his body. The impact of the bullets made Jacob look like a puppet on a string, jumping side to side in a surrealistic death dance before he fell to the tile floor.

The officers stood over Jacob's body riddled with gaping holes, spurting blood. Neither of them had ever fired their weapons before except for when they practiced at the shooting range. The younger one retched at the sight of the sea of blood surrounding both bodies in the hallway. During the onslaught of bullets, the neighbors on the first floor had retreated into their apartments and double and triple locked their doors.

“Damn,” the older officer said, “We told him to stop, but he kept coming. He must have heard us. What a nutcase.”

“What else could we do? No one can blame us. We had to protect ourselves. He was wielding the knife like a madman, spouting that mumbo-jumbo about a monster. He said the man he kept stabbing was a gorilla with a crocodile mouth and shark teeth. He was obviously delusional and completely insane.”

The officers looked back for the bloody body they had seen writhing on the floor in the hallway when they entered the apartment. Their mouths dropped open when they saw it was gone. All that remained was the blood that had pooled on the floor and the blood splatter on the wall. The door to Grover’s apartment stood ajar, and the black interior beckoned to them like a doorway to Hell.

“Where’d he go, for God’s sake?” The officer with puke caked on the front of his uniform shouted in disbelief.

“He couldn't get far after losing all that blood,” the other said, wide eyed. They reloaded their Glocks and crept into the room. Feeling for a light switch and finding it, the first officer turned on a table lamp in the corner, washing the room with light.

On the floor they saw a trail of what looked like red blood turning green leading from the entry door into the adjoining room. And there in the middle of the floor, they found a lifelike latex mask of an elderly man with a thick head of grey hair.

They almost browned their shorts when they heard a strange keening laugh from the next room. It wasn’t exactly a laugh but a diabolical hyena-like giggle. The kind of demented caterwauling Snidely Whiplash might make while watching the train booming down the track toward the helpless heroine strapped to the railroad track.

Then, the stench of something from the grave wafted into the room and covered them like a blanket of Ebola, ominous and foreboding. Both officers shook uncontrollably as they crept cautiously into the next room.

They saw movement at the window, and just for a moment in a flash of neon, they saw a hairy form peering at them with red glowing eyes and a long black tongue, vanishing like magic before their eyes.

They ran to the window and looked out on the empty fire escape and the silent street below. Nothing moved. Whatever was there had disappeared like a wisp of smoke into the dark night.

THE WALL

During the month of June 1990, Cletus Brown had been drifting for eight days in an inflatable life raft with no land in sight in any direction. His current predicament was the result of his passing out after drinking too much rum and cracking the hull of his yacht on a reef.

The luxury craft started taking on water immediately, and it didn't take long for the multimillion-dollar vessel to disappear into the murky depths. Thankfully, the collision had aroused Clete from his stupor in time for him to deploy the life raft. His father had told him when he’d given it to him for his twenty-fifth birthday it was stocked with supplies for about ten days. Clete assumed he was about two hundred miles off the coast of Borneo when he’d collapsed at the stern.

The sky looked ominous. A storm was brewing. He’d really done it this time. He hoped his love of the bottle wouldn’t lead to a Darwin award for stupidity. He was too rich and too good-looking to die so young. His father was a multibillionaire, who showered him with cash and the finer things, which allowed Clete to travel around the world as a rich playboy. He had only just begun enjoying his three favorite things to the fullest, Captain Morgan rum, wild, big-breasted island women, and raising hell.

Finally, on the ninth day, the fog lifted, and Clete spotted land far off. He began to use his paddles to navigate toward the distant island. As he approached, he began to make out a mountain range towering above the tree line toward the west and a manmade wall stretching across the breadth of the island at roughly the midway point. He hadn't seen the original King Kong movie for quite a few years, but this wall reminded him of the one in the movie. He shuddered at the thought of the prehistoric monsters that devoured many of the crew on Skull Island in the movie as a breath of a cold wind bristled the hairs on the back of his neck.

On the tenth day, Clete finally maneuvered the raft away from the huge rocks that stood like sentinels on the shoreline. The waves were awesome. It was all he could do to reach shore safely without crashing into the massive boulders. But finally, after a considerable amount of time riding waves and dodging rocks, he jumped out and dragged the raft far enough away from the surf to moor it before the next wave came crashing in.

After catching his breath for a time, he stood there like a modern day Robinson Crusoe, looking at the dense terrain, the magnificent wall, and the gray mountains behind it. From the start, this island didn’t strike Clete as a paradise in the middle of the Pacific like many he’d seen on his travels. The waves battering the shoreline and the immense wall made it feel ominous and foreboding. He stood marveling at the massive wooden beams spiraling into the sky that looked as ancient as the pyramids. This overwhelming structure, obviously constructed by skilled artisans many years before must have been built to keep something big in or out depending on one’s perspective.

Where were the people who had built it? Were they still lurking in the jungle beyond the beach? What could be so big and so terrible someone would spend years constructing such a colossal structure in the middle of the ocean?

The dead silence that hung over the island unnerved him even more than the foreboding wall. In every jungle movie, he’d ever seen there was always the weird laugh of the Kookaburra bird among the trees, but for some reason, this island didn’t have one or any other bird he could hear. It seemed as if something terrible had gobbled up every living thing.

It was getting dark, and Clete felt exposed and oddly nervous on the beach. He wanted to find an indentation in the rocks where he could escape the strong winds and the roar of the waves pounding the shore.

Five minutes later, he found the perfect shelter in the jagged rock face of the mountain and crawled inside for the night.

The next morning when he opened his eyes, he saw the barrels of three soldiers’ rifles pointed at his face. Trying to remain calm, since they hadn’t slit his throat while he slept, he said, “Look, fellas, you don't need to point your weapons at me. I mean you no harm. I’m not armed. I made it to your island in a life raft.”

The men in uniform stared at him blankly and said nothing.

Clete continued, “I’m sorry if I've intruded on your island paradise, but I had no choice. If you contact the authorities so they can come and get me, I'll be out of your hair in no time. My father will even give you a little cash for your trouble.”

During his explanation, Clete noticed the three men with the rifles were extremely old for soldiers. They kept standing with their weapons pointing at him, apparently waiting for further orders.

“Do you speak English?” Clete asked, hoping to find a way to communicate.

They said nothing.

Suddenly another elderly, more decorated soldier Clete assumed was an officer appeared and stood over him. He said something Asian to the others and they saluted him. Two of the men with rifles grabbed Clete and dragged him to his feet. Wrenching his hands behind his back, they bound his wrists with ropes and led him away to a path leading deeper into the jungle.

Clete repeated what he'd said initially, but the soldiers still didn't appear to understand English. They spoke an oriental language among themselves. He thought it was Japanese, but he wasn’t sure.

Finally, they arrived at a walled village that reminded Clete of the forts he’d seen in old western movies. He saw tired soldiers in tattered uniforms milling about as his captors escorted him to a holding cell in a small outbuilding. He could see the crude fort had seen better days. Almost every roof sagged. Several had gaping holes in them. The construction of the walls appeared extremely rudimentary. Not a single nail, bolt, or piece of hardware was visible. The rough-hewn timbers were bound together with thin flexible vines and sealed with dried mud.

Clete remained stoic as he looked at their archaic construction techniques. He knew insulting the old soldiers would not help his cause, so he bit his tongue and tried not to snicker.

As he sat on the ground inside his cell, he noticed the rifles the men carried looked like something from World War II. He'd seen this type of weapon in old movies, but again, they were laughable and obsolete compared to weapons today.

He remembered his initial thought of being like Robinson Crusoe in a strange land. He hoped his man Friday would show himself soon before he died of boredom or was drawn and quartered by these old geezers for some bizarre reason he hadn’t determined as yet.

He saw a shadow move across the ground, and looking up, he discovered the oldest and even more high ranking officer peering at him through the bars. This elderly old timer had three stars on his collar insignia.

Clete knew it was futile, but he said cordially, “You must be the head man. I'm not familiar with your uniform and your medals…”

The man said something Clete didn't understand and followed it with what sounded like a question himself.

Clete shook his head and shrugged showing he didn't understand.

What a fine mess this was. He was probably on an island inhabited by a giant beast, populated by old Japanese soldiers who didn't speak English, and they were hostile for some crazy reason. All the equipment he saw was ancient. He‘d never seen any of it before except in some old movie. There was no sign of a computer, phone, hardware, or even a walkie-talkie.

Clete said, gesturing to his mouth, "I speak English. What language do you speak?"

Three Stars looked at one of his men, said something, and the man ran into a building a hundred feet away. After a few seconds, he returned with a large dog-eared book and handed it to his superior.

Three Stars opened it and showed a picture to Clete. It was a map of the world. He pointed to Japan and made a gesture for him to say where he was from.

Clete reciprocated by pointing to the middle of the United States.

The officer looked at where he'd pointed and closed the book. He didn't look happy.

Clete didn't know why where he was from would be upsetting to the man, who turned briskly and stormed off.

About midday, a short, slim soldier, who looked like he was at least seventy-five years old, placed a plate of some weird green stuff on the ground next to his cell and scurried off.

The soldiers had removed the ropes that bound him when they placed him in the pathetic excuse for a cell, but they were still holding him prisoner for some reason. He reached through the wooden bars, picked up a stalk of the green stuff from the plate, and smelled it. It had a foul odor, but he was hungry, so he placed the stalk in his mouth and closed his eyes.

He tried to pretend the morsel was a succulent piece of lobster tail from the Oyster Bar restaurant in Grand Central Terminal, but started retching after the first bite. Not only did the pretense fail entirely, the bitter taste was so disgusting, he puked it on the ground. Several soldiers milling about saw this, laughed heartily, and exchanged comments he didn’t understand.

Clete didn't think anyone on the planet could swallow this inedible, smelly stalk. He didn’t understand why they would serve it to him unless it was a joke or some form of starvation technique to loosen his tongue.

Then, he saw the three old soldiers, who laughed so hard at his expense, go to a nearby table, and pick up a similar plate of the stuff. All of them munched it down like broccoli or cauliflower with no problem. Could this really be what these people ate as a daily staple? And why was every soldier he saw old enough to be his great-grandfather? How long had these men been on this godforsaken island?

While pondering these questions, Clete saw the nastiest looking, humongous centipede he’d ever seen skitter across the ground in front of his cell. Three of the soldiers saw it and dropped their plates like hot potatoes, and like their lives depended on it, leapt toward the enormous insect. They collided in midair, and two of them knocked heads and were momentarily dazed.

The third soldier swooped up the creepy crawly, popped it into his mouth, and started chewing and slurping on it like it was the tastiest food he’d ever eaten. The look on his face was as if he had just tasted ambrosia from the gods. While the old codger savored the scrumptious delicacy Clete wouldn’t think of putting in his mouth, the other two decrepit soldiers pounced on him from behind and began to beat him to a senseless pulp. Despite the vicious battering, the semiconscious man lay there bruised and bloodied with a big smile on his face. Could food on the island be such a delicacy the old soldier would risk life and limb to horde an insect to eat all by himself? He felt a pang of apprehension as he contemplated what that might mean for him.

Later that afternoon Three Stars came with a younger soldier of about sixty also sporting very few medals and stood outside Clete’s cell. The officer said something to him, and the younger man asked Clete in broken English, “Where other men?”

“Other men?” Clete replied. “There are no other men. Like I said, I came to your island by myself in a life raft after my yacht sank.”

The interpreter looks somewhat puzzled and didn't seem to understand what Clete had said. Three Stars saw this and asked the interpreter a question. After he shrugged his shoulders, the officer slapped him hard in the face.

The interpreter gathered his composure and resuming a military posture, he turned back to Clete with the big welt on his cheek. “What rank, you?”

“Hey. Read my lips. Like I told you, I’m not a soldier. I'm a civilian on vacation. I don’t have a rank. Could you please tell me your commanding officer’s name so I can try to communicate with him?”

“Colonel Nakamura, commanding officer,” the younger man replied timidly. Then he interpreted for the colonel whose anger was rising. Nakamura slapped the soldier again and responded gruffly.

The interpreter turned back to Clete and barked, “You lie! Tell truth or be tortured.”

Clete didn't know what to say. He knew now he‘d found an island populated with lunatics. He decided to ask some questions himself, “Who are you anyway? How long have you been here?” Clete made gestures with his hands to help the man, who was obviously struggling with English.

“We Fifth Battalion, Japanese Army.”

“And when did you come here?”

“We come…. He paused, obviously trying to remember how to say the date, then said, “1944.”

“You must not remember dates very well. You said 1944. That was forty-six years ago. That can’t be right,” Clete said shaking his head.

“Nineteen forty-four,” the interpreter beamed. “That correct.”

Puzzled, Clete asked, “Why have you stayed here so long?”

“We wait for orders.”

“Hey, man, I hate to break it to you and the colonel, but the war ended in 1945. The war is over.”

“War over?” he repeated dumbfounded.

“Right.” Clete nodded. “The Allies bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and you surrendered.”

“Surrendered?” he replied in utter disbelief.

“I must say your English is not so bad if you’ve been here almost fifty years. I'm surprised you remember anything,” Clete said shaking his head incredulously.

The interpreter told the colonel what Clete had said, and after another verbal retort, Nakamura slapped him even harder than before and lambasted him for his apparent incompetence.

The interpreter with blood running from his nose turned back to Clete. “Colonel say you lie. Japan never surrender. We invincible. You no eat until you speak truth.”

“Well, that won't be any great loss, but I've told you the truth. Contact your superiors, for god’s sake, they’ll….”

Clete stopped in midsentence. It finally dawned on him as the two men stormed off, these old soldiers had no way to communicate with anyone outside the island. He also realized the waves crashing continuously on the rocks probably prevented them from escaping on their own boats. They had no way of knowing the war was over, and he had no way to prove it to them.

Clete sat on the ground thinking about all the lost years these men had given to their country. If they had been here that long, maybe they had exhausted the wildlife on the island and were reduced to eating these disgusting stalks and an occasional insect. He wondered why fish wouldn’t be a possibility. After all, they were in the middle of the ocean. He felt sorry for these poor bastards, and he also felt sorry for himself. Of all the islands in the Pacific, he’d had the misfortune to wash up on this one.

These men were emaciated. Every one of them was a bag of bones. He winced at the thought of the geezer, who gobbled up the ugly centipede and the way the other two men had punished him for not sharing it.

Another gaunt soldier kept leering at Clete with unnerving malice. This was understandable if the man considered Clete his enemy, but even scarier, was the ravenous hunger in his eyes when he looked at him.

As the day dragged on and the sun beat down through the empty slats in the roof of his pitiful cell, Clete saw the same look on the face of every soldier who passed by. He estimated more than fifty soldiers had come to his cell to leer at him during the afternoon. What did they know he didn’t?

Clete had a bad feeling. As the sun descended toward the horizon, he sat on the ground bemoaning his fate, obsessing about the soldiers’ ravenous looks, and what could be so big it would require a thirty-foot wall to keep it out.

Suddenly he heard the sound of drums coming from the jungle and heard an agitated crowd of voices chanting and yelling. He saw the hungry look of the soldiers ogling him change abruptly. Their expressions told him it was time for them to be somewhere else. Except for the one guarding him with the rifle, the rest of the men rose and scurried off. Half an hour later, five soldiers he hadn’t seen before came to his cell, unlocked it, and motioned him to come with them.

When Clete stepped from his cell, the soldiers tied his hands behind his back and led him off toward the jungle and the riotous din of a crowd being whipped into frenzy.

As he approached the back wall of the fort, he saw about twenty soldiers atop the wall looking warily into the jungle with their rifles at the ready. Several more opened a rickety gate. The five soldiers escorting him pushed him through it.

About fifty feet in front of him he saw a large band of pygmies, much like the ones he remembered from the movie, Tarzan the Ape Man with Johnny Weissmuller. They looked like miniature, but pudgy, warriors with distended stomachs holding their spears. Ten female pygmy prisoners with their hands tied behind them stood next to them. The leader with a weird headpiece motioned the women forward and several of the warriors shoved them into the clutches of a group Japanese soldiers, who surrounded them at gunpoint.

Above the trees, Clete saw the sky was red from the gigantic bonfire burning in their village. There was no doubt the pygmies were planning to have a hot time in the old town tonight. Hopefully, not at his expense.

Clete saw the Japanese colonel and the pygmy chieftain motioning to each other. Afterward, the soldiers prodded the ten female pygmies toward the path leading back to the fort. One of the soldiers jammed his rifle into Clete’s back and pushed him forward into the clutches of the pygmy warriors. The warriors shouted an unintelligible command, and threatening him with their spears, motioned him to follow.

Clete heard the women screaming for help from the tribe, but their pleas went unanswered as the Japanese soldiers dragged them toward the fort.

Clete assumed from the exchange he’d been traded for the ten pygmy women. He wondered if the decrepit Japs were going to fuck the women, eat them for dinner, or both. Then, he cringed, wondering what the pygmies were planning to do to him.

After a short walk, the warriors led Clete into a clearing. He could see a village of thatched roofs in the distance. Far beyond, the giant wall loomed ominously ahead.

As Clete followed the path toward the wild, frenzied celebration taking place around the raging bonfire, he saw stakes on both sides of the path with shrunken heads atop them.

No matter how futile the attempt, he struggled even harder to escape his impending doom, but to no avail.

As he grew closer and closer to the center of the village and the bonfire, he saw more scary warriors with bones through their noses, whooping, hollering, and closing around him. Some started bowing to him as if he were a God.

Through the tangle of arms, Clete saw a huge black cauldron positioned over an enormous fire. Steam rose from it like billowing clouds as several natives dumped stalks like the ones they served him in his cell into the pot.

Hundreds of pygmy warriors cheered and threw their arms into the air as he passed. Every one of them held a spear and appeared to be in a crazed stupor of some kind. Their eyes were blazing with pent-up fury and bloodlust.

What a horrible way to die, cooked in a scalding cauldron, then picked to the bone by a bunch of cannibal pygmies. As he grew nearer, he heard the bubbling of water boiling inside the pot. He began to struggle even more with all his might. Try as he may, he couldn't break free.

Over the sound of drums and chanting, Clete heard the rat-tat-tat of machine guns in the direction of the Japanese fort, then a series of catastrophic explosions. Black clouds of smoke billowed, followed by fingers of fire rising high into the sky.

Then he heard the roar of helicopter blades coming from a remote section of the jungle. Looking in the direction of the sound, Clete saw the lights of the three choppers coming fast in the distance. Could this be a search party his father had sent for him when he discovered him missing for more than ten days? How could they have found him in thousands of miles of ocean? Then he remembered, the salesman, who sold him the yacht, mentioned both life rafts had tracking devices in them just for this purpose.

The drums and the chanting ceased when an amplified voice boomed from one of the helicopters hovering over the village:

We are looking for Cletus Brown. We know he's among you. Release him immediately, and we will leave here without further disruption to your way of life.

The fire in the distance was becoming a raging inferno, but was isolated by the beginning of the rocky base of the mountain and not spreading in their direction. The amplified voice continued:

We have eliminated to the last man a retirement village of Japanese soldiers with a taste of their own medicine. A sneak attack and it was their bad luck it happened during one of their orgies. What you see burning is the final remnants of their fortress. We have learned from our persuasive interrogation techniques Cletus Brown was traded for a number of your women. We will shortly begin burning your village to the ground unless you release Cletus Brown immediately.

Clete knew the hard-core professionals his father would have hired to rescue him would have slaughtered the Japanese old-timers without even breaking a sweat. These men, certainly mercenaries, would have the latest weaponry, night vision glasses, and sophisticated sensing devices far beyond anything the Japanese force had ever seen. He didn’t think the colonel would have surrendered even if they’d given him the opportunity no matter what the odds were against him. He was the kind of martyr who would order his soldiers to fight to the death for some kind of heroic principle Clete was too selfish to understand.

The booming voice continued:

Show me a sign you understand what I'm saying and return Cletus Brown to the beach where he came ashore immediately. Our wrath will be upon you if you have harmed Clete in any way. We will blow your island to kingdom come if you have taken his life. You have ten minutes to give me a sign before we open fire. Don’t be stupid.

Clete looked at the bewildered faces of the pygmies, who apparently did not understand a word the man in the helicopter had said. They watched in awe at the fire burning on the outskirts of the island through the trees, and then dismissed it as something out of their control. Having no idea of the dire consequences awaiting them, they resumed their celebration and pushed Clete onward.

Clete counted down the ten minutes in his mind as he waited for the rescue party to begin their assault while he trudged onward. If he lived, Clete pledged he would talk to his father about the buffoon in the copter speaking English to a band of pygmies who probably spoke Swahili or some other exotic language. On the other hand, how could a small black ops crew extract him safely from a village of pygmies. The threat on the loud speaker was probably a bluff at best.

Many of the pygmies would also be slaughtered shortly if they didn’t lay down their spears and give him up, but they had no idea of this. They continued to whoop it up around the bonfire. Clete wondered if some type of jungle booze was fueling their frenzy.

No sooner had the thought entered his mind than Clete heard a thunderous roar from the jungle. It must be the beast the wall was built to keep out, and it sounded pissed. Clete saw the unbridled terror in the eyes of the warriors who surrounded him. It far exceeded their fear of the announcement from the copter. The drums and the chanting became increasingly louder. The crowd grew more agitated.

The soldiers began to prod Clete forward with a new urgency as the teeming throng parted in front of him. To his surprise, the pygmy warriors had veered around the steaming cauldron and continued along a path that wound around the middle of the village toward the enormous, foreboding wall. The line of pygmies bordering the path continued to bow to him as he continued to struggle desperately to free himself. Hundreds more warriors emerged from the jungle along the way.

The odds of his survival seemed bleak, and probably hopeless. He estimated there could be a thousand frenzied spear-throwing pygmies, all whipped into a frenzy by some jungle narcotic to deal with and some enormous beast.

Ten minutes later, the foliage blocking his view of what lay ahead parted, and he was finally standing before the awesome wall. Directly in front of him, about twenty pygmies strained to move an enormous log that ran across the breadth of the fifteen-foot wide gate. Once that task had been completed, about forty more men, twenty on each side, strained to open the thirty-foot tall gate enough for the five soldiers and Clete to proceed through it.

Directly ahead, Clete saw a stairway leading to an altar. He stopped walking and tried to slow his march to impending doom by becoming dead weight like a toddler having a tantrum. Without skipping a beat, the diminutive warriors dragged him up the stairs and bound his wrists to a post at the top of the altar. Clete kept struggling to the point of exhaustion as the pygmy warriors retreated inside the wall and slowly closed the gate behind them.

Clete had to piss like a racehorse, and since he'd been holding it for three hours, what else could he do, but let her rip. While the urine ran down his leg, he heard the splintering of trees and the crash of several more falling behind him. Something humongous was coming and toppling trees as it carved a path through the undergrowth.

He heard a thunderous growl and the heavy footfall of the beast made the ground vibrate with each ponderous step. It screeched so loud Clete thought his ears would explode. He closed his eyes. What was the point of seeing the thing that would soon tear him limb from limb, rip his head off, and piss in his neck. He prayed it would be over quickly. He hated the sight of blood, particularly his own.

Where were his rescuers? If they were going to save the day, they’d better hurry.

From behind the mountain, two helicopters appeared simultaneously, one from the left and one from the right. They circled in an arc around the altar. Clete saw the outline of two men in the cockpit of the first chopper as it roared past him. One of the silhouettes inside raised his arm to wave. A split second later, a mammoth, scaly claw swatted the copter down like a pesky fly and sent it hurtling toward the jungle where it struck the side of a rock wall and exploded into a ball of flame.

No sooner had Clete recoiled from the heat of this copter crash than the second copter opened fire with an ungodly barrage of artillery. It flew like a mad hornet with insane bravado right at the towering colossus roaring like a den of lions behind him. The concentrated attack seemed to do nothing but irritate the hideous monstrosity. To make matters worse, the pilot who obviously had more balls than brains misjudged the reach of the beast. The overzealous suicide bomber hadn’t noticed the tree the creature carried in his claw like a twig. It swung it at the copter like a battleaxe, and connecting, it propelled it into the trees like a giant, broken albatross. Clete watched it disintegrate upon impact into another fiery ball.

The monstrosity was unlike anything Clete had ever seen in a zoo or even in a movie. It was a conglomeration of creatures, a truly frightful aberration. Its heart shaped head reminded him of a giant cobra, yet the beast stood erect like an ape. Green scales covered its torso. It stood at least four times the height of a normal human with massive bulging biceps and prodigious bulging thighs.

A third copter swept farther around from behind, and hovering a safe distance from it, riddled the gargantuan creature with another barrage of heavy artillery. Clete watched in amazement as most of the bullets ricocheted off the green scales covering its body like armor. Then the bullets ascended the torso of the beast and zeroed in on its heart shaped reptilian head.

The beast let out a thunderous roar of pain as one of the shots found its mark in its left eye. The monster covered it with one scaly claw and threw the tree club end over end at the chopper, which clipped its tail rotor. Immediately, Clete saw the craft, no more than twenty feet off the ground, start a slow tailspin.

The pilot must have realized the damage to the rotor was lethal, and the copter would soon begin to spin like a top earthward to oblivion. He tried to veer away from the raging colossus to attempt a last-ditch crash landing. The chopper sideswiped a tree and cartwheeled into a thicket. As soon as the craft stopped thrashing, the survivors piled out and ran for their lives.

The creature leveled the trees that stood in its path and bounded after them. It stepped on two of the men, smashing them into flattened bloody pulps, scooped up three others, and started to munch on them like human trail mix. Afterward it belched and spit out the remnants of uniforms and footwear. A piece of arm hung from between its teeth onto its lip, and then its lizard tongue slurped it inside.

Clete closed his eyes and recoiled backwards as the beast turned toward him. He was fucked. He had nowhere left to go. The creature bounded toward him with a slithery, fluid motion. Clete couldn’t look. He closed his eyes.

He felt the monster’s hot breath on his face and the stench of its fetid breath. He waited. When nothing happened, he couldn't stand the suspense, so he squinted a peek through one eye. He could see the lid of one of the creature’s eyes was shut. The other leered at him in wonder like it had never seen the likes of him before.

Clete looked down at the stairs leading to the altar and saw shreds of ropes littering the ground. He assumed, as in the movies, the pygmies had offered him up as a sacrifice to the beast they apparently considered a god. Based on the number of pieces of ropes strewn about, there had been many sacrifices before him over many years. Clete strained to look at the reptilian monstrosity and saw disappointment written on its hideous face. A scaly claw descended, and the sharp tip of it sliced open his shirt and jeans in one downward motion. The beast pinched pieces of the fabric away leaving Clete, except for his socks and shoes; naked as the day he was born.

He saw one big eyeball descend closer to his body and ogle him more closely. Then a shriek of unmistakable, utter despair from the creature exploded both of Clete’s eardrums as it pounded its chest and raised its enormous claw into the air and shrieked something animal he couldn’t translate in English even if he still had eardrums. Nonetheless, even though Clete didn’t speak reptilian, he knew from the look on the creature’s face it had said, “You're not a woman!”

Then the beast squashed Clete like a bug on the sidewalk with the heel of its claw. Immediately it began to dismantle the enormous wall, one giant timber at a time, for revenge. By the end of the night, the beast snaked on some of the surviving pygmies and held illimitable dominion over the island.

* * *

Clete’s father sent several more search parties to the island to rescue his son before finally dying in his palatial mansion from a heart attack. Not only did the search parties fail to return, they were never heard of again. Magmus Brown died a broken shell of a man with no one he loved to leave his billions but his prized Siamese cat, Shaharazod.

THE GREAT SANDINI

Andrew had time to kill as he wandered into Juggs, a popular nightspot in the Village. He noticed on the sign outside a magician was the headliner tonight rather than the usual rock band. It was a light crowd compared to most Thursday nights. He thought of going down the street to Bongo’s, but decided a magician might be more satisfying than a Goth playing heavy metal bullshit that made your ears bleed. He was tired of seeing huge tattoos covering every inch of skin and hideous barbells hanging from their ears and noses.

There were so few people attending tonight's show, he could sit anywhere he wanted. He sat down at a table almost dead center in front of the stage in the first row. The waiter swooped on him like a buzzard, hungry for tips on what Andrew assumed would be a slow night. He ordered a gin and tonic and popped an Altoid in his mouth.

Andrew noticed a line of chairs behind a single mike stand on the stage. He counted twenty. He wondered if there would be enough paying customers to fill that many seats. The waiter placed a napkin and his cocktail on the table and scurried off. It was 7:45 and show time was at 8 o'clock.

To Andrew’s shock and amazement, it was like a dam burst all at once. Throngs of people rushed through the outside door and started filling the seats around him. By 8 o'clock, the room was close to full.

After a blast of music signifying the start of the show, the MC introduced the great Zandini. He was middle-aged and wore a black tuxedo. He opened the act by pulling a white rabbit from a top hat. Then placing the rabbit back inside the hat, the rabbit transformed into a white dove and flew offstage. The audience exploded with applause.

After five captivating card tricks, Zandini announced he would do some hypnotism for the next part of his act. He asked twenty volunteers to fill the chairs on the stage. About ten people jumped up and rushed up the short stairway without any coaxing. After that, Zandini went from table to table and picked others to participate. Andrew cringed when he stopped at his table and said, “You look like a perfect victim… I mean participant.” Everyone around him motioned him toward the stage.

Andrew took a sip of his drink, climbed the short set of stairs, and took one of the remaining empty seats. He knew his drink would be watered down with ice by the time he got back. He sighed.

With a patsy filling every chair, Zandini began his spiel. He instructed the participants to close their eyes and concentrate on what he was saying as hard as they could. Andrew concentrated as the magician slowly counted backwards from ten to one.

When Zandini reached one, he asked all the participants to open their eyes. Seventeen of them appeared to be in a trance while the other three smirked with pride the magician had not been able to hypnotize them.

Zandini instructed the three to return to their seats. Starting from the left end of the row, he went from one person to another lifting their arm from their lap and letting it fall back to it. Some of the people, he let remain in their chairs, and others he told to return to their seats in the audience until only ten of the original twenty remained in their chairs. Andrew was one of them. Apparently Zandini had somehow deduced those seven he told to return to their seats were only pretending they had been hypnotized.

The audience loved this part of the show. Several of the participants barked like a dog and meowed like a cat. One was told he was Little Richard, and after two stagehands wielded a piano to center stage, the man attempted to play and sing in Little Richard’s persona. The man couldn't play the piano worth a shit, but he did remarkably well on the vocals. Andrew wondered if he was a shill, someone who the magician had paid to play the part of Little Richard.

Zandini finally came to Andrew, asked him his name, and instructed him to scream “bananas” every time he heard “monkeys” used in a sentence. He did a trial run and the crowd roared with laughter.

Zandini instructed one of the women he’d hypnotized she was asleep, then awake many times in succession. Each time he said she was asleep, her eyes closed and her head fell to her shoulder. Each time he said she was awake she bolted upward to attention with her eyes bright and alert. Again, the audience roared with laughter and applause.

After the hypnosis segment of the show was over, Zandini resumed his card tricks and then performed several sophisticated disappearing acts requiring props. A real crowd pleaser was when he sawed his female assistant in half and transformed her into a lion. Andrew’s schtick was intermingled between these acts. Six times, Zandini used a sentence, which included the word “monkeys” and Andrew would leap from his seat and scream “bananas.” The dumbfounded, clueless expression on Andrew's face was priceless and became the highlight of the entire show.

When the show was finally over and Andrew got up to leave, Zandini called him to the side and whispered in his ear, “Meet me outside in the alley in five minutes. Do you understand?”

Andrew replied as if still feeling the effects of the trance, “I understand.”

Andrew left Juggs and stepped into the shadows at the entrance of the alley outside the club. He waited, and it wasn't long before Zandini joined him.

“Well, Andrew, I have a special favor I need from you. Will you do it for me?”

Without hesitation Andrew nodded and said in a robotic voice, “I will.”

“Somehow I knew you’d say that,” Zandini replied, “You will remember what I’m about to tell you verbatim, and then you will forget we ever spoke. Do you understand?”

Andrew answered, “Yes.”

“Let me hear you say, ‘Yes, Master’.”

“Yes, Master,” Andrew said with a glassy stare.

Zandini said, “Good, Andrew. You're really a wonderful subject. Now listen carefully. On August 21 at midnight, you will go to 921 Sycamore Lane. The back door will be unlocked. You will enter the house and without turning on the light, you will go upstairs to the second door on the left. You will creep silently to the left side of the bed. On the floor under the bed, you will find a sledgehammer. You will use it to hit the blonde woman in the head ten times as hard as you can. Afterward you will put down the sledgehammer, pick up the phone on the nightstand, and call 9-1-1. You will tell them you have murdered Mary Smith, give them your location, and wait for the police to come. Do you understand what I want you to do?”

“I understand,” Andrew said solemnly.

“Now tell me what I just told you to do.”

Andrew repeated it verbatim.

“You really are a wonderful subject,” Zandini said, impressed with Andrew’s recall. “As I said before after you complete the task, you will not remember anything I've said tonight and will not remember you ever saw me at the club. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“You can go now, Andrew,” the magician said.

Andrew turned and started walking away.

Zandini shouted, “More fun than a barrel of monkeys!”

Andrew screamed, “Bananas.”

The magician smiled and walked away.

As Andrew walked to the corner to hail a cab, he abandoned the phony stupor he’d been feigning for the past hour. He knew all about hypnotism, and most importantly, he knew how not to be hypnotized. During his youth, he’d worked with a hypnotist who called himself the Great Bumari. His real name was Bubba Clapp. He performed the same kind of act as Zandini. Andrew went to college with Bubba and from time to time, he helped him by being a shill at his stage shows at the county fair.

Andrew used to impersonate Elvis back in the day when he participated as a paying customer and pretended to be hypnotized. Elvis was easier to impersonate than Little Richard because Elvis didn't play an instrument in the act.

Andrew wondered if the man who played Little Richard was on the payroll. He could’ve been hypnotized, but he probably wasn’t. Andrew didn’t dispute the validity of hypnotism. He knew under the right circumstances many people are easily hypnotized while many are not. At the county fair, Bubba told him about half of the people pretend they're hypnotized when they aren’t so they can clown around. If the hypnotist doesn't figure out who they are, they can ruin his whole show by acting up at the wrong times. Andrew thought Zandini had been excellent in choosing the right subjects for the act. That is, except for himself, who was able to trick him because of his previous involvement with Bubba.

A cabbie pulled to the curb and Andrew got in, “582 Riverside Drive,” he said.

As Andrew watched the buildings passing on his way to his apartment on the west side, he pondered what he would do now he was involved in a murder plot. Should he call the police and tell them what Zandini had planned on August 21? Or should he forget all about it and just not show up when the day came?

Could he live with himself if someday he read in the paper a woman had been bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer, and he could have stopped it? And what if the killer hired someone else to kill the woman and he crossed paths with Andrew later on? What would the murderer do knowing Andrew knew he had planned to murder Mary Smith.

Who was Mary Smith? Was she the magician’s wife, girlfriend, blackmailer, competition? Where would Zandini be when the murder was being committed? Surely not lying next to the woman while her head was being hammered into a bloody pulp.

Mary Smith. He repeated the name that certainly seemed suspicious like Jane Doe. Why would Zandini even tell him her name? It wasn't necessary to tell him. Could this just be some kind of joke? Could the magician have known he was deceiving him? Did he know he really wasn't hypnotized? Andrew didn't think so, but he had no way of knowing for sure. What a fine mess he’d gotten himself into this time. Why hadn’t he gone to Bongo’s for a lap dance?

He entered his apartment, grabbed a Bud from the fridge, and tried to decide his best course of action.

Finally, after three more beers, he decided to call the police. If they confronted Zandini, he certainly wouldn't go through with the murder knowing he was under suspicion and possibly surveillance. Also, once Mary Smith, whoever she might be, was on to Zandini, maybe she would file for divorce, throw the asshole out on his ear, or find a new beau who looks like John Cena to court. The magician would be the last of her worries after that.

Also, Zandini would no longer be a threat to him either. If anything happened, the police would be knocking on the magician’s door as their number one suspect. And lastly, if this were just a joke to begin with, well, the joke would be on him.

All right, here goes. Andrew picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1.

“What is your emergency?” The no-nonsense female voice on the line asked.

Andrew began to tell her all about Zandini’s plans to murder Mary Smith.

Not far into the story, the operator transferred Andrew to the police department and he began to tell the story all over again. The officer at the desk interrupted him and advised him to come to the station and speak with Sergeant Luker about the matter.

A half an hour later, he met Luker and his partner, Officer Gannon, in a conference room at police headquarters and told them the story from beginning to end. Gannon recorded it and took notes on a pad.

Afterward the threesome took a bathroom and coffee break while Andrew’s statement was transcribed. Luker and Gannon rejoined Andrew in the conference room an hour later and Luker summarizing from the transcript, said, “So you went to Juggs to see the show last night, which was… August 11th. That's when the magician who calls himself The Great Zandini attempted to hypnotize you during the act. In fact, he thought he had hypnotized you, and at some point, he told you to meet him in the alley outside the club after the show. That’s when he asked you to do him a favor by going to 921 Sycamore Street on August 21 and batter a woman named Mary Smith to death with a sledgehammer you would find under the bed. Afterwards, you were to call the police, confess you committed the murder, and wait for them to come and arrest you. We can go over the details a little more. But that’s the gist of it in a nutshell. Correct?”

Luker reminded Andrew of Jack Webb in his role as Sergeant Friday in Dragnet during the sixties. Not in physical appearance, but how he talked very fast, and came right to the point. All he wanted was the facts.

“That's exactly right, Sergeant Luker,” Andrew said, beaming.

“There are a few things I don't understand from your account of what happened,” Luker said, leaning back in his chair.

“And what might they be?” Andrew asked nervously. He wasn’t sure these officers believed him.

“Why did you pretend to be hypnotized to begin with?”

“Like I said,” Andrew explained. “I used to be part of the act in a similar show when I was in college. I just felt like fooling around when the magician said hypnotism would be part of his act. I didn't know when it started, where it would lead. I never suspected it would lead to murder.”

Gannon made a note on his pad, and Luker continued, “I see. You were just fooling around. Why did you meet Zandini after the show in the dark alley? Certainly you must've thought something was fishy about that.”

“Yeah, I thought it was strange,” Andrew explained. “But Zandini said he wanted me to do him a favor. And well, I was willing. I had no idea he would ask me to commit murder. And after he spelled it out, I was afraid to tell him I wasn’t really hypnotized. For all I knew, he may have had a gun, and there was no one else around in the alley. It may sound crazy, but that's the way it went down.”

The phone rang, and Luker picked it up and listened.

When he hung up, Andrew said, “Look, Sergeant Luker, I know there's probably nothing you can do at this point. Maybe you can’t even confront him. There's no evidence to back up what I'm saying, but I wanted you to be aware of his desire to kill Mary Smith. Maybe if you talk to Zandini or whatever his real name is, you'll scare him, and he won't go through with it. Also, his wife, girlfriend, or whatever, this Mary Smith will be forewarned and know her life is in danger. That's all I know. The rest is up to you.”

Andrew stood, and said in closing, “It’s almost dawn, and I have an important meeting at work at eleven. I'd better be going. Good luck. I hope I’ve helped save the woman’s life.”

“I'm afraid I can't let you leave. You’re under arrest for the murder of Blanche Clapp. Bill, read Mr. Knox his rights.”

“Under arrest?” Andrew barked. “What in Sam Hill are you talking about?”

Gannon ignored him and recited from memory Andrew’s Miranda rights.

Afterward, Luker explained why he was being held for murder, “To follow up your story, we sent an officer to 921 Sycamore. When no one answered the bell, he noticed the door was ajar. He indicated he was a police officer and asked if every thing was all right inside. That’s when he noticed bloody fingerprints on the wall by the stairs leading to the second level. When he went to investigate, he found a woman with her head bashed in in the bedroom. Everything was just like you said it would be except for one thing.”

“This is crazy. I’m not supposed to kill the woman until August 21. I’ve never been to 921 Sycamore. I don’t even know where that is,” Andrew stammered.

“Sorry, Mr. Knox, the woman’s husband, Bubba Clapp says he saw the murderer and can identify him,” Gannon piped in.

Andrew couldn’t believe his ears. “Bubba Clapp, why that’s the magician I worked with at the county fair when we were in college.”

“You didn’t know Clapp was the Great Zandini when you saw his act last night and followed him home?”

“I didn’t follow him home. And no, I didn’t recognize him. If it’s the Bubba Clapp I knew in college, he doesn’t look at all like he did then. He didn’t have a goatee, and he didn’t wear a tuxedo. He’s also fifty pounds heavier than he was then.”

“I don’t know what your game is Knox,” Luker said with a wry smile. “If I didn’t know better, I would have guessed you escaped from one of the local asylums. If not, you definitely need your head examined. Who else would come to the station and tell us exactly what you were supposed to do at the Clapp residence on August 21 after you committed the exact murder shortly before you arrived. We have every thing you said on tape… and we have an eyewitness. Your goose is cooked, Knox.”

Andrew sat in a bewildered state of shock, trying to think of something to say to prove his innocence. “You mentioned one thing I said was different. What was that?”

“In addition to telling the story from a different point of view, the only thing that didn’t jive is the date.”

“The date?” Andrew repeated as Gannon cuffed him.

“Yeah. The date the murder happened. The coroner estimates Mrs. Clapp was murdered around midnight. You said you were supposed to kill her on August 21, but you actually did it last night, which was August 11. You must have followed Mr. Clapp back to his place right after attending the show.”

“That's crazy. I went straight home to consider if I should notify the police or simply not do anything about the proposed murder. I decided after three hours of soul searching to do the right thing and blow the whistle on Zandini. I called 9-1-1. They forwarded me to the station. The officer on the desk referred me to you.”

“I believe you're telling the truth about that.”

“You do?” Andrew said, totally confused by the admission.

“Why wouldn’t I? You didn’t even change your clothes after you killed her. You’re not very bright, Knox. You still have her blood all over your shirt.”

Andrew looked at his shirt, which looked to him like it had just come from the cleaners. “What do you mean? I don’t see any blood.”

Luker and Gannon looked at him like he was crazy. His beige shirt had bloodstains all over it. Gannon snapped a picture of him and showed it to him. For some reason, he could then see the shirt was splattered with blood. He couldn't believe his eyes. He had no memory of going to the Clapp house and pounding the woman’s head in with a sledgehammer. Zandini must have really hypnotized him and made him do this horrible thing without him remembering. He even made him see his shirt without the telltale blood splatter.

Andrew whined to Luker and Gannon. “Somehow Clapp must have recognized me in the audience and knew I would be the perfect person to kill his wife once he hypnotized me. Somehow he deceived me into thinking I wasn't hypnotized, then while still under his spell, he made me kill his wife right after the show, but he told me to remember I was to commit the murder ten days from now on August 21, and then confess to the murder. He may have even told me to blow the whistle on him this morning after I committed the murder.”

“Wow,” Luker said, shaking his head after listening to Andrew’s outlandish story. “This guy Clapp must be a lot more than a magician to pull all that off, he must be a fucking wizard. Sounds like he committed the perfect crime, and you’re going to pay for it, Knox.”

* * *

Eight months later, the jurors returned to the courtroom, reaching a verdict after deliberating for only thirty minutes.

The judge rapped on the sounding block with his gavel and said, “Andrew Knox, please stand.”

Andrew struggled to his feet in a disheveled suit alongside his incompetent lawyer, totally exhausted from a week of damning testimony against him.

“Do you have anything you'd like to say before the verdict is read?”

Andrew stood with his shoulders slumped, a beaten man and said, “I've been framed by Bubba Clapp, the Great Zandini. He really killed his wife and got away with it. The justice system in this country sucks,” Andrew said dejectedly, tears running down his face.

The judge asked the jury foreman to read the verdict. The foreman stood and said coldly like he was passing sentence on Charles Manson, “We find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree.”

Andrew slumped in his chair, knowing he would be going to the gas chamber at some point in the future. As an officer escorted him from the courtroom, Andrew heard a familiar voice behind him whisper, “Monkeys.”

Andrew screamed, “Bananas,” but didn’t know why.

From Billy Wells

Thanks for reading my book. I hope you enjoyed it.

Reviews In Today’s World

In the past, when everyone knew everyone else in their neighborhood, people used to share information about the good and bad things they discovered to help each other in their day-to-day living.

Now, in this global village where we are in touch with everyone and everything in nanoseconds, Amazon monitors what readers say about the books they read in order to distinguish the good from the bad. Amazon is particularly interested in what the readers that actually bought the book say about it.

Since reviews are the life’s blood of today’s authors, and we depend on them more than ever before, I would sincerely appreciate it if you would place a review of this book on amazon.com. It does not have to be long; only a minimum of twenty words is required.

This link below will take you to the Amazon page to place your review for Scary Stories: A Collection of Horror- Volumes 3 & 4.

https://www.amazon.com/review/B00NW2C0VU

If you place a review on amazon.com for any of my books of short stories, I will hold you in high regard for all eternity, and I may include you in my will.

Short Story Collections by Billy Wells

Don’t Look Behind You: A Collection of Horror

My Amazon best seller of seventeen nightmares in the horror/thriller genres with surprise endings.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DCFQTVE

In Your Face Horror

A compilation of 31 of my most gruesome stories from Black As Night and Shivers and other nightmares

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008TC5WHM

Thrillers & Chillers

A compilation of 31 of my least gruesome stories from Black As Night and Shivers and Other Nightmares for my readers who love thrills and chills, but not so much horror involving vampires, werewolves, and hairy monsters.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008TC21DU

Shivers and Other Nightmares

My second compilation of 30 short stories, mostly horror with surprise endings. The book includes some thriller and chiller stories as well.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008O9SPEW

Black As Night

My first compilation of 32 short stories, mostly horror with surprise endings. The book includes some thriller and chiller stories as well.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0054ECJ4C

Scary Stories: A Collection of Horror –Vol. 1

A collection of ten short stories, mostly horror with surprise endings. This book contains longer stories than my others, and in my opinion, some of my best work to date.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GA55824

Billy Wells Horror Anthology I

A compilation of my first two books, Black As Night and Shivers and Other Nightmares containing 62 mostly horror stories with surprise endings.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IRVH5J8

Something In the Dark and Other Nightmares

A collection of fourteen of my best horror short stories with surprise endings selected from my five books. The title of each story begins with Something In the ….

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JQOR57C

Scary Stories: A Collection of Horror –Vol. 2

A collection of ten short stories, mostly horror with surprise endings. This book contains longer stories than even Volume 1.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J0GUEMO

Scary Stories: A Collection of Horror –Vol. 3

A collection of ten horror short stories with surprise endings to tickle your scary bone.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L4Y3LES

Scary Stories: A Collection of Horror –Vol. 4

A collection of thirteen horror short stories with surprise endings to tickle your scary bone.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NW2C0VU

Thrillers & Chillers 2

A compilation of 14 of my least gruesome stories from Don’t Look Behind You and Scary Stories: A Collection of Horror- Vol. 1 for my readers who love thrills and chills, but prefer deranged maniacs rather than vampires, werewolves, and other hairy monsters.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MFDF6HC

Singles

It Lurks On the Mountain

Three hunters are missing and bloody body parts of headless torsos have been found at Widow’s Peak. Is there really a hairy monster on the mountain killing hunters or is this a ruse by Bubba Rexrode to attract business to the dying town?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E9YWM8G

The Tomb (From Scary Stories- Vol. 1)

To save his job at the Metropolitan Museum, archeologist Brain Mitchum claims he has just acquired an ancient map revealing the location of the last undiscovered tomb of the Pharaohs.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E9G9XSG

Cold Calls

Mortimer will stop at nothing to find new clients for a failing funeral parlor business passed down to him by his ruthless father.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KD6KDSK

The Caller From Hell (From Don’t Look Behind You)

Clyde Bottoms is receiving calls from a disconnected phone last used by the Morningside Cemetery twenty-five years ago in Hell Massachusetts.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KPCWDJE

Forbidden Fruit (From Scary Stories- Vol. 2)

A father buys purple fruit at a roadside stand that turns his youngest son into a ravenous ghoul.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KCX6Z4U

The Reckoning (From Scary Stories- Vol. 2)

A grizzly and two college graduates travel 1,800 miles to have a rendezvous with destiny and the devil.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KNNUM0C

Crawlspace (From Scary Stories- Vol. 4)

Two reporters interview a strange humpbacked man in a house where previous owners conducted gruesome experiments.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OYVHTD2

Places To Find Out More About Billy Wells:

Billy Wells Amazon Author Page

billywellshorror.com home page

Billy Wells Horror You Tube Channel

Billy Wells Coffeesmoke You Tube Channel

Billy Wells Author's Den Page

Billy Wells Boards On Pinterest