Dead Pictures
T.J. Blade
Copyright 2014 by Tracey McGill
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Disclaimer: The persons, places, things, and otherwise animate or inanimate objects mentioned in this novel are figments of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to anything or anyone living (or dead) is unintentional. The author humbly begs your pardon.
Green Valley Apartments
Asheboro, NC
“Hey Simon, where's those pictures? The assignment is due next week you know.” Gwen shuffled through pictures of landscapes and nudes on the kitchen table. She stilled with wide eyes when she saw one of an old man in full frontal nude. Shaking her head in attempt to rid herself of the image, she laid it among the others and waited for her project partner to answer.
Simon rushed into the room carrying an armload of photos. “Hold your horses. I’ve had a lot of homework this week.” He dumped the huge load on the couch and pointed to it. “They’re in there somewhere.” She gave a loud moan. This was going to take a while.
She began the torturous sifting through the pictures, without Simon's help. She kept thinking the whole time how she wanted to strangle him. The guy was so disorganized. It was bad enough she was stuck with him for the semester.
After some time, she got a crick in her neck. She pulled at her shoulder to make the pain go away when the stack she was going through toppled over. Making a disgusted sound, she started to pick it up when what she was looking for caught her eye.
The picture was a simple black and white nude of a young woman lying down on her side with silk sheets cradled around her body. She had a distant look to her face as if she was drugged or something. But what caught Gwen's full attention was that all over the woman’s body, from her neck down, were faces of people with bulging eyes and open mouths in muted screams. Those faces were terrifying yet at the same time fascinating to Gwen.
She looked over at Simon who was sitting at the kitchen table digging through those pictures. She held up the woman's photograph, “Found one. Is there any more?”
He glanced over and sighed before standing up. “Yeah, I’ll help you look.” He sat beside her and started rummaging through the pictures as well.
A wave of chills rippled down her back as the photo’s grotesque images kept reappearing in her mind. The faces looked so real it freaked her out. She let out a slow breath of air then took another one to calm herself down.
Minutes passed in silence. Her heart pounded harder as they found more and more photos of the same woman. “Here, that’s all of them.” Simon handed her the additional pictures for her to look over in detail. Each photo had different faces all over the woman’s body. Gwen couldn’t tell if they were real or not and that was the most frustrating part. “Do you think she’ll be willing to talk to us?”
Simon shrugged. “I don't know. I tried calling her again this morning with no answer. Our best bet is to show up at her house and hope she’s keen on talking.”
Gwen frowned and said, “Yeah, let’s hope.”
****
“Turn left!” Gwen swerved the car so fast that she almost hit the driver’s side window with her head. She glared at Simon and huffed. “Thanks for telling me now.” He lifted up his eyebrows. “Sorry.” She mumbled underneath her breath, “I should have just left you behind.”
“I would have been perfectly happy with that too.”
She gritted her teeth and held out a hand. "Give me the directions." He gave her the piece of paper. "It would have been better if we had a GPS." She almost hit him.
They were silent for the rest of the drive. It was a long stretch of road that made her nervous as time went by. She looked at the directions again thinking they were heading into nowhere. The last time they passed any houses was about ten miles ago.
Finally the driveway came up, she pulled in. A nice looking white Victorian house was the last thing she thought she was going to see. “Wow, it’s so beautiful. I want to live here.”
Simon snatched the directions from her. “Are you sure this is it?”
She nodded and parked in front of the steep stairs. “That’s what the internet said.” She got out of the car still staring at the beautiful home. She led the way up to the wraparound porch then looked at Simon who came up beside her. “You did bring it right?”
He held up the digital camera in his hand and cocked his head to the side. “Duh. Do you have your recorder?” She stuck her tongue out at him before getting the tiny black box from her pocket and pressing the doorbell.
The ornate door immediately swung open to reveal an older woman with auburn hair laced with white. She didn’t have wrinkled features which sort of shocked Gwen given the internet said the woman was seventy-six years old. It took her a minute before realizing this was an older version of the woman in the photos.
She pasted what she hoped was a natural smile on her face. “Hi, I’m Gwen and this is my class partner Simon. Are you Ms. Tunney?”
The woman squinted and asked, “Are you religious people?”
Gwen looked over at Simon who gave her a cock eyed look. She answered, “No, we’re here because of Professor Tobias Brown. Do you know him?”
“I didn’t ask why you're here. Are you religious or not?”
Gwen's eyes grew wide at the question before answering, “No, we’re not religious.” The woman turned around and walked back into the house. The door was left open and Gwen frowned at Simon before entering.
She followed the older woman to a living room with an enormous fireplace big enough for several tall people to stand up in comfortably. She noted the plain white walls were devoid of anything personal and wondered if this woman lived alone.
The older woman sat down on a metal chair resting next to the hearth. Sitting in the middle of the room was a maroon couch facing the fireplace. It was the only colorful thing in the room.
Gwen and Simon sat down on the couch in awkward silence. She cleared her throat and asked the woman, “Do you mind if I record this?” Ms. Tunney shook her head before sitting there motionless. Gwen felt a little uncomfortable as she pressed the record button and said loudly, “Thank you Ms. Tunney for speaking with us. Do you know Professor Tobias Brown?”
“Yes.”
“Um, Tobias Brown is our photojournalism teacher. He issued an assignment to investigate some pictures he gave us to determine if they are real or not and to hear the story behind them then write about it. We were wondering if you could, you know, tell us about them or not, it’s really your choice.” She blushed from her rambling. It was nerve-racking talking to this woman after seeing those faces.
Ms. Tunney placed her hands in her lap and sat straighter with a sparkle lighting up in her eyes. “I was six when I realized how much I loved to kill. It started out with small animals and birds. Just the feel of them dying from my hands and then seeing their blood pouring out of them was a high for me. It continued all the way up into my college years where I felt more exhilaration in the art. It wasn’t until I saw a woman get hit by a bus that I knew human death was more. That’s when I knew that I had to kill someone.” Gwen looked over at Simon. His pale face made the situation too real. This was way more than they were ready for.
Ms. Tunney continued, “They were doing a fundraiser at the local school in 1971 and many of the kids were going around the neighborhood asking for mo
ney. A little boy came to my door alone. It wasn’t until my bathtub was full of his blood and his mangled body was floating in there that I realized what I had done. But I wasn’t sorry. I threw the body parts in the town lake and left without a care. People suspected it was me, I even went to court. During the trial some neighbors decided to take matters into their own hands.”
She looked at the fireplace and Gwen could see the flames reflected in her eyes. The woman continued her story, “I was killed by a blunt force to the head. And because of my misdeeds, my soul was dragged down to Hell where I was torn apart several times before paramedics brought me back to my body. Apparently, those who killed me had a conscious and called for help.”
She reached up to touch the back of her head. “I wasn’t supposed to come back you see. A door was left open when I came back and it attached itself to my soul.” She looked over at Gwen. “After I returned, I met Tobias and we had a brief affair. He was married at the time. He loved to take nude pictures of me, I didn’t mind though. That’s when we found out about the souls from Hell being seen through my body. At first we didn’t know what they were until a friend of mine, a psychic, explained it. Tobias decided to sell the pictures to make an extra buck.” She briefly closed her eyes. “The screams are the worst during the day. The laughter is what keeps me up at night. I can hear them even now.” She opened her eyes and the glare of torture in them was evident.
Gwen didn’t know if she should believe the story or not, but one thing she did know, the woman had psychological problems. Cautious she asked, “Do you mind if we take some pictures of you Ms. Tunney?” The older woman just sat there not blinking.
Simon brought the digital camera up and clicked the button several times with the flash. He looked at the pictures, glanced at Gwen and showed them to her. Sure enough, faces showed up on the older woman’s skin. Gwen stared at them with mouth partly open. She felt a trickle of sweat bead down her cheek as she looked at the older woman with a fear growing inside her. She whispered, “How is it that no one has come forward with this before?”
“They’ve all died before telling anyone.” She chuckled. Her toothy smile was interrupted as her face contorted in pain. She suddenly jumped up from the seat and rushed at Gwen with an unimaginable speed. Everything went black.
****
The smell of smoke woke Gwen up. Shadows danced over the room. She was sitting in the metal chair Ms. Tunney sat in earlier, wrists tied behind her back with thick wire in front of the fireplace. The couch was flipped over across the room as if it were nothing. She realized Ms. Tunney was in the fireplace and her heart stopped when she noticed Simon’s body was lying in front of the woman. Fire blazed behind them.
She cried, “What’s going on?” Ms. Tunney cocked her head and gave Gwen a blank stare. “Because my soul is a door there has to be a guardian for that door. It requires blood to help me keep the souls from tearing through my body. You see, I didn’t want to die so we made an agreement; human blood for my safety. Tobias helps me sometimes. Why do you think you’re here?” She reached down and picked up Simon’s limp body in one hand. She broke his neck with one twist of her wrist. Gwen screamed as tears ran down her cheeks.
Ms. Tunney dropped Simon’s body. She doubled over onto her hands and knees moaning. She cried out as the back of her head split open and something started squeezing through. It was pale with no eyes or nose just a large mouth with rows of razor sharp teeth. It had long human arms attached to an emaciated torso showing ribs. When it finally dropped to the floor, Gwen couldn’t breathe as it stood on long bony legs. It picked up Simon’s body. His camera fell to the floor.
The creature picked it up. Growling, it threw the camera past Gwen's head. A loud bang was followed by several flashes lighting up the room. Each flash gave Gwen a clear view of the thing as it started to devour Simon's body piece by piece. She screamed, even more terrified now.
Ms. Tunney stood up and said to the creature, “She’s the one. Thank you for everything.” She looked over at Gwen. “Don’t forget to feed it every six months. Oh and it takes fire to invoke it.” The thing placed a clawed hand on Ms. Tunney’s head as she closed her eyes.
Ms. Tunney went ghost white and fell down into the ash and soot from the fire. In her place was a black shadow the entity held.
The monster turned to Gwen and went over to her with the shadow in tow. When it reached her chair, it immediately jammed clawed fingers into one of her eyes. She screamed and gripped at the wire around her wrists.
A weird coolness entered into her eye and she felt a heaviness throughout her whole body. Memories she knew weren’t hers played across her mind. She gritted her teeth in agony as images of Ms. Tunney killing people over the years flooded her mind.
Burning pressure in her eye started out small and then grew. She realized the demon was entering her body. She shrieked at the top of her lungs as inch by unbearable inch it squeezed through the small hole. It was fully inside when she heard the screams and laughter for the first time.
####
About the Author
T.J. lives in a full house. With ten cats, four dogs, a frog, frilled lizard and a tank of fish there’s no doubting her love of animals. She’s been writing stories since childhood and enjoys getting lost in another reality.
Acknowledgements
To my mom who helped me throughout the whole writing process. Thank you so much for putting up with me. To my family and friends who read my stories and gave me feedback. I really appreciate it.