I, Horror
By Anthony North
Copyright Anthony North 2012
Cover image copyright, Yvonne North 2012
Other books by Anthony North
I, TRILOGY INTRODUCTORY VOLUME
I, STORYTELLER SERIES
I, POET SERIES
Inmate Earth: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/237329
Bard Stuff: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/252874
Mind Burps: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/272508
Verse Fest: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/302837
I, THINKER SERIES
I, Paranormal: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/237339
I, Essayist: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/259928
I, Society: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/272861
I, Unexplained: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303478
I, Observer: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/304480
CONTENTS
Introduction
Secret of the Tombs
Lick
Natural Law
Mini Novel - When Darkness Comes
The Forbidden Room
Any War
A Load of Superstitious Twaddle
Mini Novel - The Spirit
The Over Shadow
The Full Moon
The Thirteenth Step
Absent Thoughts
Mini Novel - A Narrative of Life
Spirit of the Times
The Storm
Polka Dot Dark
Mini Novel - Reflections of Me
Awakening Night
A Gothic Romance
Storm Mother
Mini Novel - Love Conquers All
I'm Not All There
To Be Faithful
Spellbound
A Performance
Doing Wrong
The Experiment
On Sleep
Ambrose - The Old Man
Ambrose - Bed Mate
Ambrose - The Hand of God
Ambrose - We Must Go There
Ambrose - Any Body Will Do
Ambrose - It Stalks Me
About the Author
Connect With Anthony
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to my horror fest. How scary can Flash Fiction get? Why not judge for yourself. In these short tales of the macabre I bring the gothic into the modern. But a warning: there's no blood or gore here. I try to freeze it instead.
SECRET OF THE TOMBS
Professor Arnold sat back in his chair, satisfied. He looked about him – took in the full scope of so many years of research. But now, following a last desperate rush, he had completed it.
‘A shame it will never be published,’ said Carthew, his assistant.
‘We’ll see,’ Arnold replied, knowing he was possibly right.
It had been many decades since the problem came to light. It had begun soon after the Tutankhamun find. The authorities rubbished the curse, blaming it on a lapse of sanity. But the simple fact was something had happened when the seal to the tomb was broken.
Some in the know believed it really was the soul of some ancient Egyptian, who had travelled through the millennia in wait, like some avenging angel. But when another untampered tomb was discovered, secrecy of the modern kind descended upon the operation.
Cameras filmed the breaking of the seal, caught the archaeologists mouthing the curse, and then there was the strange aroma, a myriad of flashing lights, the touch of the strange plaster work – the texture. And soon after, one of the archaeologists began to be taken over by some force …
Well, what were thought to be the victim’s of a curse were victims of murder. This became clear – if something from antiquity taking over the mind like that can be thought of as murder ….
Arnold remembered seeing the reports of the change in demeanour of this millennia-old assassin, taking over the mind of an old friend, and those eyes …
Of course, he’d have nothing to do with the supernatural theory. Immersing himself in the supernatural Egyptian culture, he began to realize what may be going on. Word magic was the beginning of the solution, for as people mouthed the curse, they created the sound of the words. Then the aroma (smell), flashing lights (sight) and texture of masonry (touch).
It was a sudden disorientating assault on all the senses; as he managed to recreate with Carthew. And that, he realized, was a form of hypnosis. And eventually he even worked out the message delivered subliminally by the act of breaking the seal.
‘We know what happens, now,’ he said to Carthew. ‘We can protect ourselves. We can now go into the dozens of tombs secretly found since then.’
But no protection for Carthew on that first successful experiment.
‘A shame it will never be published,’ he had said. If only Arnold had looked up. Seen the eyes. He might have stood a chance …
LICK
Mr Jobsworth was a thin, wiry social worker with attitude. He knocked on the door and entered as soon as it was opened. Depositing himself on a chair, he observed the single parent concerned. And he couldn’t help but notice her long black skirt, strange pointy hat and myriad books of spells about the place.
‘What?!!’ she said.
‘We’ve had complaints about your 16 year old son.’
‘What you done now?!!!’ she shouted to another room.
The boy came into view, sporting blood red eyes, extended canine teeth and covered in hair.
Mr Jobsworth gulped. ‘It appears he goes around licking people.’
‘So?’ replied the lady. ‘What do you expect? He has a vegetarian diet.’
‘But he can’t go around doing that,’ he said.
‘Better that than eating them, I’d have thought.’
Mr Jobsworth – a vegetarian of many years – saw the logic in that. ‘But how did this happen?’ he asked.
She blushed. Then looked downhearted. ‘Oh. It was a spell that went sort of wrong.’She cheered up. ‘But at least, he’s harmless – with his vegetarian diet.’
‘Have you ever thought of muzzling him?’
The boy growled – began to pace up and down on all fours.
‘Don’t be silly. I can’t do that. Human rights, and everything.’
Mr Jobsworth doubted if that would apply in its entirety. He looked at the boy once more. The boy looked at him, lunged forward, momentarily, and snapped.
‘Well I think we ought to take him into care – for public safety, and all that.’
Which was too much for the boy. He lunged once more and bit Mr Jobsworth’s head off - which wasn’t really that unexpected. After all, as his mother had said, he DID have a vegetarian diet.
NATURAL LAW
He thought it would have gotten easier once he had crossed the river, but it was not to be. Damned nature, he thought, how am I supposed to survive in this?
He had been brought up in the city; had gone to university, become an engineer, and a successful career in oil exploration followed. And it would have continued if the light aircraft hadn’t crashed, he the only passenger, and the pilot dead.
Nature was lush about him, but he had no idea how to survive. He tried waiting by the plane for rescue, but after several days, no one came. So he took the gamble – attempted to walk out.
He was near exhaustion as he came upon the clearing and almost collapsed.
Suddenly a voice said: ‘You okay?’
He looked around. Saw the man. He was a large man with a beard, scruffily dressed, a weather beaten face, a battered homburg pushed back on his head.
‘Thank God,’ said the engineer, sure that he was now to survive.
The man smiled; sat beside him. ‘Were you in that plane that crashed over yonder?’
‘Yes. I’ve
tried to walk out, but I’m no good in this place. I know nothing of nature.’
‘Ah, the modern predicament,’ said the man. ‘What do you do?’
‘I’m an oil man.’
The man winced. ‘Oh, one of those. Don’t you understand what you’re doing to nature, destroying it?’
‘What do I care for it? We’re technologists now. What do we need with it?’
‘Well if you want me to help you get out, you’d better start to learn.’
It was many hours later, and much conversation, before the engineer began to be lulled by the environment around him. The man had told him how to just sit there, taking it all in, and he had to admit, it made him feel relaxed for the first time in his life. Around him, the bush seemed to expand, as if coming to him, and he felt an intimate relationship with it all. And it wasn’t long before he had this thought that maybe he never wanted to leave after all …
It was two days later when a small helicopter landed with the two man search team. They had found the aircraft and were following his trail when they spotted him.
‘Well I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said the first man.
The second was speechless, just looking into the bush, the engineer almost entwined within it, his body cold, but a serene look upon his face.
Just a few yards away, they found a skeleton, years, maybe decades old, a battered old homburg hat beside it.
They were about to leave to report what they’d found when they saw a bearded figure close by. ‘You okay,’ he said.
WHEN DARKNESS COMES
To feel alien in a world of people is to be dead. I'd thought that since I came round, after the accident. How it happened, I don't know. I cannot remember a thing. And neither can I remember any of these people, or even myself.
'A bad case of amnesia,' Dr Forster had said. Infact, he said a lot to me.
What is it about shrinks that they think they can play God? OK, I'm here, in this psychiatric hospital, unable to leave except on his say so. OK, I'm here, often drugged - when I become violent, at least. But who is HE that he thinks he can play God with me? After all, he can't order me dead. Can he?
'But you already are. You told me so.'
I hate him.
I hate him like I've never hated anyone before. And it surprises me how easily I can hate. I hate so much - the incarceration in this place; not knowing who I am; I even hate the sun.
'You like the dark, don't you?'
'What if I do?'
'It tells me you remember something.'
To escape this place - that would be paradise. To get out.
I have to get out. But I'm here, restrained, the nurse on her way to the hospital, Dr Forster telling me how I've been naughty.
My hands are twitching in their restraints, wanting to be free, to encompass Forster's neck. To squeeze.
It had been a spirited escape. At least, I thought it had, but did I learn something of myself?
I'd evaded the nurse outside the ward. He'd gone to the toilet and I slipped out, into the corridor. It was dark, and the darkness bathed me, invigorated me, and I felt somehow superhuman.
Stealthily, I'd crept through the complex, not far from freedom. Then I saw her. She was a nurse, taking a relaxing half hour in a staff room, her uniform unbuttoned, exposing an inviting cleavage. But was it the cleavage that excited me?
I should have gone on, left her alone. Become free. But when an impulse takes you, you follow. And I followed my impulse.
She looked as if she would scream at first. But at the last moment she looked into my eyes and felt somehow mesmerised. What was this power I had as my arms went around her, as I pulled here towards me, as that cleavage filled my vision, only to be replaced by her neck?
'You were found half an hour later,' said Dr Forster, ‘with her blood in your mouth.'
'Will she live?'
'It's hard to say. She seems to be in a coma. The doctors don't understand it.'
'And neither do I.'
Which is true. I don't understand it. I don't understand what I am. I feel like a normal guy, but I get urges. Urges I don't understand.
'Oh, that's simple,' said Dr Forster. 'Displacement disorder. You don't know who you are, so you're constructing something that can give you a sense of meaning.'
'By sucking out someone's blood?'
'It's the juice of life. And that's what you want. Life. And if you can't have your own, you'll take someone else's.'
And my hands were twitching again, wanting, more than anything else, to get them round his neck.
I'm calmer now. It's been a while since I attacked the girl.
Even my thoughts of killing Dr Forster seem to be waning. Am I becoming at peace with myself, with my lot?
I've been allowed to walk in the gardens. They're high walled with electric wires along the top. I cannot escape, so I'm allowed to walk here, to contemplate, to think.
It's twilight. I couldn't have come out before it was twilight, with that horrible sun in the sky, acting like my jailer.
'I suppose that's part of my displacement,' I said to Dr Forster.
'Hating the sun? Of course, if you bite people's necks then it follows that you'll only feel comfortable in the dark.'
And he's right about that, at least. I do feel comfortable out here, close to nature, close to dark nature. Close to ...
What are they?
Who are they?
Why am I close to THEM?
They seem to lie on the fringes of my vision. They seem alive, but ethereal. They seem to take human form, but they float, part of this world, and partly not. They have beautiful faces, but also ugly.
'What are you?' I ask, but they don't reply. They just float there, on the periphery of my vision, and I feel a sense of loss.
I suppose I'm in the right place to go mad. What comes first, we can ask, the madness or the asylum? But that is witty, and there's no room in my life, now, for humour.
I don't know what those images were but I know I knew them, know I longed for them.
'But they were only delusions.'
Damn you, Forster. Here I am, trying to make a new life, a new persona, a new reason, and you do nothing but turn it into inconsequence.
'But if they are not delusions,' he continues, 'then there's only one alternative.'
'Which is?'
'That you're sane. And if you are sane, then you can only be a vampire. Which, of course, do not exist.'
Or do they?
I have broken out of the hospital and I wander alone in the night. When dawn breaks, I know I'll have to find somewhere to sleep, for I AM a vampire. I know that now.
It came to me suddenly the other night, the proof that Dr Forster was wrong. You see, I felt guilty about the nurse. But why would I do that if I was suffering displacement? Surely I would revel in what I had done?
So the answer was simple. I AM a vampire, but I had an accident, found myself unconscious - and when I awoke, not knowing who I was, the human infiltrated into the mind, complete with its complicated emotions.
I AM a vampire, but I'm also partly human once more. I AM a vampire, with a vampire's needs, a vampire's ways, but infected by that horrific conscience of mankind.
I felt the tug of that conscience when my hands finally went around Forster's neck. But not to strangle as I once thought, but to hold still. And when my teeth punctured that neck and I sucked, I felt whole.
But afterwards, when he was dead, I also felt guilt, and it cripples me so ...
I'm in a deep cellar while day passes outside. I've killed a great deal in the past week. And every time, I fed, felt delight. But afterwards ...
My ethereal friends surround me, comfort me, want me back.
I look at them and feel close, wishing I could be like them again, so uncomplicated in their basic instinctual desires. But I'm partially human again now. And I know I could never be fully like them again. I know I can never get rid of this damned conscience.
&nbs
p; I'm trapped between two worlds. To see my ethereal friends is to be pulled apart in my very being. Yet to feel alien in a world of people is to be dead. And maybe that is the answer. But then again, for me, it is no answer at all.
Oh, to be able to kill myself, to commit suicide and remove myself from this misery. But that is impossible.
I'm already dead.
THE FORBIDDEN ROOM
I walked purposely down the drive. I suppose I must have seemed out of place, dressed in my usual suit, resting a huge sledgehammer on my shoulder. And even more so when you understand I’m a doctor. After all, a sledgehammer wasn’t usually part of the doctor’s equipment. But these were exceptional circumstances.
I could feel the aura of the mansion as soon as it came into view. And what seemed like centuries of disturbing sights and deaths had only added to its mystique.
Of course, when I first arrived at my new practice, I knew nothing of the house. But that changed when its new occupants arrived at my surgery. They’d only been there three months and there was a definite depression about the couple. ‘It’s that place, that horrible place. The disturbances throughout the night and the saddest thoughts seem to cling to us.’
‘It’s the curse,’ my receptionist said after they’d gone.
I questioned her and discovered that centuries ago something had happened in a room in the mansion – no one seemed to know exactly what – and the door to the room had been bricked up. Forbidden to future occupants, some secret, some malign evil within had affected so many that no one could live there for more than a year. All had reported the strange disturbances, and some had died – which had been put down to the curse. Indeed, some argued for a gruesome discovery of murder in the room, or suicide – a dead child.
The couple came back repeatedly for treatment. I referred them to a psychiatrist. Once, in desperation, I even tried the local vicar regarding exorcism – ‘Too powerful,’ he said. ‘It has been tried before.’
Well, now I had decided to take my own kind of action – fight this madness head on.
‘You can’t do it,’ they said as I entered the house and made my way to that imposing bricked-up door, and as the sledgehammer first made contact I could feel their anxiety as they pleaded for me to stop. But I had to see this through.
Eventually the doorway was clear. Putting down the hammer I noticed my own heart race, and a little of that depression seemed to cling to me, and for that one brief moment, I, too, feared this forbidden room, but taking out my flashlight, I entered.