“One, two, three … the easy stuff was done, but now for the ragged, jagged number four. Oh, stop, STOP!!! That tickled too much, you must be finished soon. You stepped back and grinned, and the children jump up and down, ‘Light it, please, PLEASE!’ I patiently sit, and watch and wait, to see what’s in the offing. Soon I feel inner warmth and an unnatural pleasing glow.”
“The spooks and hobgoblins did come, the witches and fairies unparalleled. They’d pass and never took notice. My inside is scorched, my eyes grow weary and my smile has dropped to a frown. My skin is dark and puckering, like that of ‘ole man Brown’.”
“Soon I shall be cast aside, as mere garbage; a stinking, rotten shell. But then, what did I truly expect…it always turns out the same…for us, the ‘Happy ‘Unlucky’ Jack-O-Lanterns!!”
CHAPTER 58
The Crow Caws At Twilight
By Cora Bennet
There it was, staring at me from the rough wooden fencepost. It had beady little eyes, one of which was kept focused on me.
I hated crows. Here I was, sitting on the back porch just before twilight, drinking a glass of lemonade, minding my own business. Why couldn’t it do the same?
Ever since Johnny Miller from down the street told me that his grandpa was eaten alive by a swarm of crows, I’d avoided them very carefully. It wasn’t like I believed his story or anything. I was twelve, for goodness sake. Still, they creeped me out.
I chuckled quietly to myself. Why was I afraid of a stupid little bird? Johnny and I did far more dangerous stuff than scaring birds. Why, just the other day we’d gone diving into the reservoir from the cliff.
I took out my slingshot, which was already loaded. I hit it with the first shot. There was a little thumping noise and the bird was gone, replaced by a couple of stray feathers that floated slowly downward. I grinned triumphantly.
Minutes later, I heard cawing. Then it got louder.
Suddenly, there was silence. Curious, I stood up and squinted at the field. I wished I hadn’t.
There in the field, were hundreds of ink-black crows. They all had their little eyes pointed at me.
I screamed.
***
Mary heard her son screaming and rolled her eyes. What was he up to now?
Another scream came, and it was cut off suddenly. Mary wasn’t worried, but she decided to go check up on Pete just in case. He could very well be in trouble.
Pete’s glass of lemonade was on the patio table, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Pete?” Mary called out. She got no response. How odd, she thought. The scream had sounded close.
A crow suddenly cawed, startling Mary and sending her pulse racing. She had to squint to find the source.
There the crow was, staring at her from a fencepost nearby. It cawed again, and loudly.
“Stupid bird,” Mary muttered. “Probably after the corn.” She stepped further onto the porch, and then down the steps. When she got to the bottom, she stepped on something hard, and it snapped loudly. Assuming it was a branch, she looked down. Then she screamed.
There, at the bottom of the steps below her feet, was a small human skeleton. It was wearing Pete’s clothes.
Loudly, the crow cawed again, then flew off into the night.
CHAPTER 59
Memories
By CMT Stibble
“C’mon Jenkins, tell us where you buried her?” The detective rubbed his hands, exhaling a cloud of vapor.
I looked around the forest, tall trees reaching to the sky. Trouble was, I couldn’t remember. But the detective was like a Rottweiler. Well, may be more like a standard poodle. I thought tight perms disappeared in the 70’s.
“Bloody Nora, it could have been anywhere,” I said, rubbing my wrists. “What about over there?”
It had been dark then when I dragged the body bag from the back of my car and all I could think of was the sound of the chain saw. I’d had cut her up nice and small in the morgue. Best place to work when you’re in the business, if you know what I mean. And Dr Stephens had the day off. “What a bloody stroke of luck,” I said aloud.
Tight perm stopped and made a face. “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” I said. He’s going to think I’m nuts if I keep this up. We reached the spot, only it wasn’t the spot. I couldn’t smell pee and I definitely remember peeing. I was as pissed as a fart that night. It was a wonder I could drive.
But Gloria wouldn’t shut up so I stabbed her—first in the chest and then in the throat. The knife made a strange sucking noise as I pulled it out and those eyes . . . wide, bulging like two marbles. I just wanted her mouth to stop. I don’t remember much of the stabbing but I do remember the chain saw. It’s was a Craftsman. No anti-vibration handle so it was tiring after the second leg.
“Bugger,” I murmured as a German Shepherd started sniffing around the trunk of a tree. “May be this is it,” I said encouragingly, heart fluttering in my chest. “It’s quite exciting, kind of like Christmas.”
Tight perm barely managed a smile, more of a disgusted grimace. He patted his nice Puffa while I stood like dick in my shirt sleeves. Category ‘A’ prisons aren’t that bad, especially good if you make the E-list. I was thinking of tinned peas when Tight Perm gagged and threw up. Must have found Glo’s head, I thought, remembering the blood. Gordon Bennet, Glo, there was so much of it. Spurting out it was, all over my nice new shirt.
But it wasn’t. A swollen, jellified leg in the jaws of a happy police dog is never a pretty sight.
CHAPTER 60
Justice
By EM Delaney
“Look at that bastard,” I grumble low in my gravelly smokers voice. “Sixteen years has done nothing to deter that monster from repeating what he did to my baby.”
I remember centering the crosshairs on the back of his head as he sat conversing with the little girl. She couldn’t have been more than nine, only a year or two younger than my Bethie.
I want to take him now. My finger twitches on the trigger and the rest of my body begins a semi-state of convulsive response as my motor skills become poor. How can I think of doing this to a human being? I can’t do it now…the child…I can’t do it while the child is sitting in front of him. My God, where is her mother?
I’ve waited sixteen years for this chance, convinced I would have no problem doing what I had promised her I would do. My word to her dying mother only last summer as she was passing that true justice would be done. I remember the look in her eyes as she died, completely in faith that I would right the wrong that had been done our little girl.
Once again I look into the scope of the Winchester 270. I knew he would come here! Three days is all it took for that child molesting vermin to come back and attempt to repeat his deeds. The system doesn’t give a shit. To turn this vile excuse of sin loose after only sixteen years…but then, what amount of time would have been fair for dissecting my child into a hundred pieces?
Look at him…smiling. He acts as if nothing bothers him. How can he and I have been born to the same mother?
I can’t stop shaking.
This has to be done.
I am the only one who can pass this judgment and make the matter right. Bethie was my child, my brother killed her. He must die.
I focus once more the crosshairs of the scope on his head but I can’t stop the response my body feels. Why can I not be still for just a few seconds so as to follow through on what I know is right.
No…he’s walking away with her. No! The shaking is worse, stop it dammit! Focus!
The target moves in and out of center of my aim. Suddenly, he stops walking and bends over to hand the little girl something.
/> Upright again he stands clean in the crosshairs.
No shaking.
Justice.
CHAPTER 61
The Kiss Of The Corvus
By Russel Cruse
A feather, shining blue-black. She picked it up, though she had no need since it was no different from others she’d seen. Large, though; not from a skittish juvenile but from an older bird, well used to the sounds of the wood and unlikely to leave her nest for anything less than a gunshot.
A gunshot would always send the rooks a-leaping from their nests, even before their wings were poised to bear them. Then, they would thrust out those great black-cloaked arms, hammer the air and rise, by no means effortlessly into the sky. And the frantic flexing of the topmost branches and the downdraught of wings would send a shower of leaves, twigs, dry bracken… and feathers cascading downwards through the canopy to the soft, spongy ground upon which she now stood.
It could not have been there above a day or two and, as she pressed the delicate filaments gently between the tips of her fingers and savoured the silky, almost audibly brittle sensation the action afforded, she made the link. Had his final selfish act delivered this beautiful thing to her?
They had thought to clean him up before taking her in to identify him. Someone had laid a small kerchief across his brow, its pristine and merciful whiteness betraying nothing of what lay beneath it. Another spotless bolt of bleached linen had been placed over his body so that his face, framed between, appeared pink and alive and for a moment, she had wondered if she might have heard wrongly. A moment; no more. As she’d approached, she’d faltered and a hand had sought to steady her and voice to reassure. Neither steady nor reassured, she had gazed at his face, and had nodded.
Only once the black rubber doors had folded behind her had she thought to ask about the marks on his cheeks. A dozen (perhaps more), small, cuneiform punctures. What had caused them? The policeman had said, quietly, that they weren’t sure. Then she had cried, as now she cried over that final kiss.
When first they met, he’d asked if he might kiss her. Of course, she’d said no.
‘Go on,’ he’d said, ‘Just a little peck on the cheek; that’s all.’
Smiling, she had presented her face to him and he had kissed her, softly. Then he had turned and placed his index finger against his own cheek and had said to her,
‘Your turn.’
‘All right,’ she’d said. ‘But just a little peck, mind.’
CHAPTER 62
Giz A Light
By TRM
“Giz a light”, the tramp drawled.
He held a crumpled roll-up in his swollen, shaking fingers. They were a nasty claret shade, pockmarked with puncture scars almost everywhere. Yellow fingernails were chewed almost all the way to scabby cuticles.
Collapsed in a corner of the bus shelter, he was wrapped in a broadsheet-padded collection of threadbare suits, all torn up, button-burst and unmentionably stained. He seemed harmless enough.
The lad in the hoodie shuffled closer and stretched out his arm, offering his fresh Marlboro as if fearing ignition of the stench billowing from his happenstance late-night companion.
The tramp looked up with a wobbly smile. That swollen, lumpy face had taken far too many beatings. His boxer’s nose was crusted with scars, as were the bags beneath rheumy eyes and his silver-stubbled, pus-erupting chin. The loose, flappy skin of his purple neck was festooned with suppurating craters in a cynical necklace. The flickering streetlight opposite gave him a morbidly yellow hue.
“Ta, mate,” he croaked. He lifted the Marlboro from the lad’s fingers with a gesture so bizarrely graceful despite the stiffness of his ruptured joints that hoodie-boy had to stare in wonder. The glowing tip of the cigarette met the scraggly end of the roll-up without any sign of the trembling that had first beckoned for attention.
The tip bloomed as the tramp drew in a rattling breath. One long draught consumed the entire cigarette. Its ashen memory bowed and then dropped away in a slow, dainty shower of grey.
The lad stared at his vanished fag, his face contorted half-way between outrage and shock. No sound escaped his lips, for he had become as pale and as flaky as the wreckage from a tab-end. Then, slowly and with the same floating grace, he crumbled inwards and folded upon himself to the ground, grey dust billowing out of puppet-like sleeves and from the ends of many-jointed trouser legs. The face was the last to dissipate before the skull rolled from the shapeless hoodie, cracking and crumbling as it lurched towards the tramp’s feet, until it was no more than a trail of sand already smeared across the pavement by a chill night breeze.
The tramp jumped to his feet, young once more. Fit, lithe and unspolit, he shucked off his stinking layers of clothing and quickly pulled on the lad’s designer togs, shaking a leg to cast out the last of the ash, before running off into the night with a peal of wild laughter.
CHAPTER 63
An Oliver Twist
By Mark Roman
Gasps rippled around the restaurant as the diners caught sight of the famous face.
“That’s him! That’s Jamie Oliver! He’s here!” the awed whisper swept through the room. Heads turned and faces lit up as the celebrity chef grinned and waved. He paused to sign a few autographs before heading towards the kitchen.
“’ow’s tricks, chef?” he beamed, approaching a large, sweaty man in a stripy apron and giving him a matey slap on the back.
The head chef’s eyes filled with panic. “Er, Issa good, Haimie, issa verra good,” he replied with forced cheerfulness, mopping his brow and loosening his collar.
“Lovely jubbly,” said the celebrity, stopping to sniff the air. “Phew! What’s that smell? Someone have an accident with a chemistry set?”
“Ha, ha, ha. You so funny, Haimie.” The head chef glanced nervously at the other chefs. Then he stiffened on seeing Jamie about to dip a spoon into a nearby saucepan.
“Er, issa not quite-a ready, Haimie,” the chef stuttered, hurriedly disarming Jamie of the spoon and putting a lid on the pan. “Why you here, Haimie? Iffa you don’ mind me askin’.”
“Just passing,” said Jamie absently, his eye catching sight of some recipes. “This tonight’s special?”
The chef’s mouth dropped open. “Er ... NO!” He snatched the recipes from Jamie’s hand and hid them behind his back. “Jussa some ideas. Experiments. Nothing, really.”
“Oh, come on, Genaro! Don’t be modest. Give us a butcher’s, mate. You’ve created a pukka tukka extravaganza, right?”
“No, issa really nothing. Serious, Haimie.” The chef looked more and more flustered, his eyes flicking left and right.
“Come on, Gen. Hand ‘em over.”
“No, Haimie.”
“Pretty please.”
Reluctantly, the head chef handed the sheets to his boss. He closed his eyes and waited.
In a far corner of the kitchen a sous chef called “Service!” and a wiry waiter hurried in to whip two plates out into the dining room
.
As Jamie read through the recipes, his laddish cheeriness drained from his face. “What’s all this?” His eyes widened in dismay. “Hemlock? Henbane?? Zinc phosphide?? But ... ?”
Genaro gave a crazed smile.
Jamie read another recipe. “Arsenic!” he cried in horror. He looked up urgently. “Stop that waiter!”
He wheeled to the head chef, his face incredulous. “Genaro! Whatcha playin’ at, buddy? You trying to ruin me? These ingredients! They’re deadly. You can’t serve this special. Its main course would desiccate a horse. Its dessert would shrivel an adult. And ... ITS STARTER’D WITHER KIDS!!”
CHAPTER 64
A Glimpse of Paradise
By Almuth Wren
Towards the end of term Emma finally sec
ured a contract for some perfect student accommodation, after a string of tiny flats had left her squashed. A romantic-looking Rectory with masses of ivy crawling over crumbling brick-walls proved ideal, and the deserted garden looked thoroughly luscious and relaxing . . and proved dirt cheap! “No competitors at all, and the vicar has long moved out,” the agent smiled.
There seemed to be one snare though, which she discovered when the washing machine delivered a stinky load out onto patio, instead of down the drain. Ringing some local ‘Hot-rod’ number she wondered if she’d got caught.
Paradise lost, so quickly?
~
“This, my dear, is actually a Roman sacrificial site, with this chapel built later-on for the storage of corpses, as a mortuary,” a dog-walker hastened to inform Emma as he saw her coming out of the house. “And I hope you know your place is haunted?” Emma stared at him. “No, really? Isn't that a bit over the top? Not every Rectory harbours ghosts.”
“A woman was killed,” he added ominously. “It was all in the papers years ago. The husband stuck a knife in her twenty times. The police searched the neighbourhood and skimmed the river, but the body was never found. It's a mystery.” “Well, I’m not superstitious, but thanks for the information.” Emma stuttered in defiance.
On Friday the plumber arrived and started on his smelly job, pushing giant rods through the pipe-work around the house without much success. “It must be further down,“ he concluded and continued his efforts in the woods, lifting gutter covers, cursing and sweating in muscled defiance. Uneasily she watched from the safe confines of her veranda. 'What if he can't get rid of the blockage? I'll have to endure this smell for a year,' she pondered with little enthusiasm, and abandoned her post.
After an hour there was a knock on the back-door. A grinning, sludge-covered pair of dungarees refused to enter the hallway. “Don't come close,” he said, “I'm covered, but we've identified the bastard. Some fat plastic-bag was completely clogging the pipes. Glad you called me. I’ve managed to push it through the sewer into the main system. That won't give you any more grief, Darling. People force anything down their toilets these days. Dirty buggers! Anyway, it's gone now. The agent will pay the bill. Have a nice evening.”