Read Black Cat Tales: Black Anne and Other Short Stories Page 8

fact that she was alone in a graveyard that was bothering Penny, there was something else in the air; a tension that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It was like a cloying silence that crept unseen amongst the graves. The snow beneath her feet crunched as she shifted her stiff legs to get the blood moving again.

  What if there was someone else here and they’d just been alerted to her presence? They could be dangerous! She resisted the urge to look back over her shoulder to check she was actually alone because that would make her feel even worse. Why did she feel so jumpy this afternoon?

  It would be getting dark shortly.

  Shut up. She told herself firmly, no longer able to resist the urge to look behind her. Obviously there was no one there but the voice of doubt persisted. Perhaps following Alderman wasn’t such a good idea after all?

  No! She had no other plans this evening; nowhere to go and no friends she could just pop in to see. She may as well stick it out here. If she persevered long enough the story would eventually reveal itself. As she settled back down she noticed again how quiet everything was. Usually there was a flock of crows that lived in the surrounding trees. Their harsh caw’s added something to the area and their absence felt unsettling. They were probably taking shelter from the cold weather; Penny reasoned miserably, flexing her fingers to keep the blood flowing.

  More snow crunched and her foot sank a few inches. Penny moved back a step, still keeping low below the wall. Snow shifted again where she had been crouching. Sometimes as coffins rotted and broke down they collapsed into themselves leaving a small impression in the ground. She watched in fascination as the ground where she had just been ducking down bowed again and then sank in on itself. Penny was aware of the voice of doubt yelling its warning in her head but she didn’t catch any words until it was too late. Transfixed by the strange event, she watched as the ground began to rise like a miniature volcano erupting, piling upwards in a white cone of freshly fallen snow. Penny stared in dumb curiosity. Then the smell hit her. A putrid stench of trapped grave gasses whooshed up at her. “Ah, god” she staggered backwards gasping, waving her gloved hand franticly under her nose almost dropping her camera.

  Then the nightmare broke. A black claw-like hand burst out from the frozen earth, scrabbling at the falling snow. A second arm appeared. She gasped in shock. Her mind refused to accept what she was seeing and she felt the flesh creep on her spine and shoulders. Someone sat up in the grave. No. Not someone, some-thing. Its festering rotting flesh had sloughed away in most places exposing bones blackened with decay. Long stringy grey hair still hung in thin lank strands from the empty skull. Penny looked on in frozen horror as the hideous corpse slowly turned its head to look at her through the dark vacant sockets in its skull. The creature’s jaws were drawn in a rictus grin of exposed cartilage and bone. Dressed in its tattered burial clothes the thing slowly stood up in monstrous animation. It took a jerking step towards her.

  It shouldn’t be doing that! Penny thought dumbly. It‘s dead! It shambled forwards reaching out towards her.

  “Oh-my-god. Oh. My. god. Oh… My… god…” Penny’s chest tightened. She couldn’t breathe. All notions of stealth forgotten, she scrambled backwards babbling incoherently before she realised she could go no further. She was up against the prickly fir tree. Cold snow fell down the back of her neck. She was cornered. Penny could do nothing but look on in abject terror and disbelief. It made not a sound as its grey fingers, only inches from her face, reached out through the swirling snow. Penny screamed. The piercing sound energised her limbs and she scrambled to her feet. Running, slipping and bumping into branches and headstone she scurried away from the looming corpse.

  The snow and her own panic conspired to disorientate her. She knew she was at the far end of the graveyard and her car was out on the road, some distance away. Snowflakes were tumbling thicker and faster. It has difficult to make out the gate marking the entrance to the churchyard. The snow blinded her eyes. Still she knew roughly where she was going and hurried in that direction, not daring to look back. Her flight, however, was quickly arrested as she saw what else waited for her in the winter wilderness.

  From out of the white swirling haze more crumbling dead men, women and even children were prowling the churchyard. Eerily silent they flapped and plodded out of the ground and between the graves towards the terrified journalist. Not even their footsteps made any noise in the colossal silence they bought. It was actually the quietness that disturbed Penny more than the sight of the unnatural things.

  These people are all dead!

  Penny screamed again. Surely someone would hear her soon. The vicar was just a few meters away. But the wind picked up again, howling between the graves and drowning out her desperate cries for help. At that moment she backed into another tree. Only it wasn’t a tree, Penny barely registered in her rising panic. Something else wrapped itself around her arm. A putrid black hand curled around her forearm. She screamed again this time tasting the foul overpowering reek of rotten flesh at the back of her throat. It was worse than bile. She wanted to screw her eyes shut but she couldn’t look away. More of the scarecrow-like men and women silently emerged all around her grinning savagely through the billowing snow. The sharp digits of their hands dug into her shoulders, her arms, her legs. The stench was overwhelming. The mob of rotting corpses fell upon her knocking her to the ground. Penny managed one more scream before her consciousness fled.

  Penny awoke a few moments later in a crawling panic. Cold earth rose up on all sides and she realised she was lying down in a dark narrow space no bigger than a coffin. She couldn’t move. The ground was hard and lumpy and moving. She recalled the state of the decomposing corpses and immediately pictured a writhing nest of maggots burrowing their way through dead rotting flesh. Her sudden frantic attempts to struggle free ceased as the dead man lying next to her tightened his grip, holding her in an eternal embrace. Penny gibbered uncontrollably. Her sanity was lost as they revealed what they had planned for her. More decomposing bodies of men and women swayed over the grave as they shoved earth down upon her. Just before her screaming fell silent, one final coherent thought managed to surface through the roaring terror in her mind. At least, she thought curiously; I’m not alone.

  Back to Table of Contents

  Jimmy the Shrew

  The bedroom was filled with a silvery darkness, save for the small pool of light spilling in from under the door. Most of the care homes elderly residents slept quietly, while the hushed whispers and soft footsteps of the night staff drifted down the empty corridors. Although there was no need for anyone to check on Albert at this late hour, the old man was woken by someone tapping on his door. At least it wasn’t another bad dream that that was waking him up, he thought groggily as the knocking came again, louder this time. Suddenly Albert was jolted fully awake. The sound, he realised, wasn’t one of the nurses outside: It was coming from inside his wardrobe.

  The retired East End gangster was gripped by a momentary panic as a vague recollection stirred in his mind. A chilling, half-forgotten warning: Something was coming for him but because of his dementia his dusty mind couldn’t remember who had issued the warning or when.

  There had always been someone wanting a piece of him, both on the outside and when he’d been a guest of her majesty. For Albert Grieve been a bad boy in his day. Driven by a sociopathic animosity, Albert had been The Big Man and hurting people was necessary when you had a reputation such as his to uphold. He’d controlled various operations dealing in everything from drugs and women to shooters and protection. Back then he hadn’t been scared of nothing – people feared him!

  Now, though the fire was going out and his addiction to violence and his unrestrained ambition was almost extinguished. Frailty of mind and body had diminished him so much that even the memories of his crooked past were just faded images. His dear Elsie, God rest her soul, had died a few years back and his kids, the ungrateful sods had disowned him as soon as they were old enoug
h. With no-one to reminisce with he’d become a ‘nobody’; a fraud. He was just another grumpy old geezer, forgotten by the world.

  The staff, of course, knew the name Albert Grieve. That’s why they treated him like scum, he thought sourly. It wasn’t so much their cold unfriendly attitude that bothered him or the scornful way they spoke to him. It was the way they disrespected him with cheap nasty food, when he’d been used to the best.

  He glanced at the stale Rich Tea biscuits on his bedside table. He’d never liked Rich Tea’s and the carers knew it – that’s why they continued to give them to him. It was just one of the many ways they humiliated him. It may well have be one of them knocking on his door to wake him up out of spite.

  The tapping from the wardrobe came a third time and Albert gathered what little strength he had left to issue a frail challenge.

  “Oi! What do you want?” he growled testily into the gloom while he fumbled for his large gold-rimmed glasses. His body had been so corrupted by old age that his arthritic joints wouldn’t allow him to sit up. Instead he had no choice but to face this joker lying sprawled and helpless on the bed as the wardrobe