Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 3

by Cheryl Mullenax

  Brenda laughed while Dave frowned. “Man, we ain’t married. I told you.”

  “He’s definitely not my type,” Brenda said.

  Dave gestured at his crotch. “You’d love to hit this.” Brenda held up a middle finger and laughed.

  “Nah, you’re a watcher.” Brenda nibbled my ear lobe before whispering, “He’s a watcher. Everyone’s a watcher. You still want to see my tits, right?”

  Drunk on beer and the promise of something forbidden, I said yes. The elevator stopped, but the door didn’t open. Dave reached out with a hairy finger and started jabbing the open door button, mumbling about how he didn’t like closed spaces. The door remained shut, and Dave kept pounding the button with a spidery finger so long and bent in more places than seemed possible, as if it bore too many joints for a normal human finger. He must’ve broken it and not set it properly, I thought. Brenda caressed and kissed me, but I felt my body go rigid with the fear that we would never get off this elevator, and this crazed veteran with PTSD would kill all of us.

  But finally, the door opened.

  “Our floor,” he said, and walked out into the hallway. We followed.

  ___

  We fell onto a bed covered with scattered laundry, her on top of me, kissing me and straddling me. The room smelled salty, worn, and smoky. Dave the veteran flopped down on the chair across from us, grunting like he’d just come home from a grueling day of work. I could feel him watching as he opened another beer, and thinking about what he had planned made me apprehensive. Did he expect to join us? I hoped not, but my mind hearkened back to something strange my dad said to me on the day of my high school graduation. Normally strict about how many glasses of wine he drank, he had one too many and sat me down in the corner away from the rest of his party, his expression signaling one of those you-need-to-know-this conversations. Son, everyone’s going to want your dick, he said, and I’m not just talking about white girls, either. You’ll see—white boys spend way too much time worrying about what’s between our legs. Some of it’s fear, but some of it’s something else. I wrote that off to my father’s homophobia, something I could never claim—never wanted to, in fact, but as Brenda worked her way down my body, pulling up my shirt and unbuckling my pants, I could feel the gaze of someone else. My hands on top of her blond head, I watched as she took me inside her mouth, astonished as she seemed to swallow me up in a deeper way than Abby Sinclair ever could—or would. I might have exploded right away if not for the effects of the alcohol, as well as the uncomfortable feeling of being watched.

  I avoided looking in Dave’s direction. I didn’t want to lose my concentration or risk losing the erection that opened the back of Brenda’s throat. But I thought of his knife and the possibility that I had stumbled into some kind of scheme, a robbery maybe or an elaborate hate crime. I looked out of the corner of my eye. Dave, to my relief, kept his face turned in another direction, toward the door separating us from an adjoining room. He appeared anxious, worried.

  Yet the feeling of being watched persisted. Brenda stopped sucking me so she could pull off her top. “You still want to see my new tits?” she said, and I said that I did, and she pressed their hard points into my face as she straddled me again, this time with all barriers removed—somehow she had taken off her shorts without me noticing—and I felt her wet slickness as she slid up and down on top of me.

  As she shifted her position, I became aware of the closet on the other side of the room, the door slightly ajar.

  My paranoia wouldn’t go away. Now it seemed probable that somewhere inside that closet, a camera filmed everything. Maybe I’d fallen in with some cheap, low-life pornographers who didn’t even have the ethics to ask me to sign a release statement. Still, I gripped Brenda’s hips as she ground down on top of me with greater and greater urgency. I didn’t even want to stop, even as I became more and more certain that the feeling of being watched came from something in there. Even the way she had positioned our bodies on the bed seemed like design, intended to provide the most gynecologically graphic view to the camera eye hidden within. As she continued to grind she pressed the palms of her hands down on my chest, and seemed close to climaxing, when we both heard it.

  The sound caused her to stop her motion and look at me, as if seeing me for the first time. She looked different too, older than I at first realized. We stayed frozen like that, looking at each other, until she finally said, “Aw fuck,” and dismounted in a way that made me feel like a horse.

  The noise we heard sounded almost like a baby crying, but more raspy, like air escaping through the pipes of a broken commode.

  Dave stood up at the same time she did, and he blocked her from the door leading to the other room.

  “Nope,” he said, “nope, nope, nope.”

  “Goddammit,” she said. “I’ll take care of it. Just let me by.”

  “You got something else to take care of. This is my responsibility. Mine. Your responsibility is there.”

  I propped myself up on my elbows, watching this exchange, unable to ignore the fact that when Dave said responsibility, he seemed to gesture not at me, but toward something further away.

  Again, the closet.

  He gave her a long look before opening the door just wide enough to let himself through, closing it behind him. The sound of a lock followed. Brenda returned to the bed, but she pushed my hand away when I reached for her. Instead of climbing back on top, she began rummaging through the clothes on the bed for clothes to dress herself with. “I’m done,” she said.

  “Listen—” Unsure of what I’d just witnessed, I didn’t reach for her again.

  “I don’t need to listen to nothing,” she said. “I do nothing but listen.”

  “That a baby?” I said. “In there? Your baby?”

  “I don’t have any baby,” she said.

  “I heard something,” I said. I started to stand, feeling that the time to leave had come, but she wouldn’t allow that. She stopped picking through the clothes and moved upon me with speed and anger.

  I expected her to hit or to scratch, but instead she pushed me back onto the bed, swinging her legs around and sliding back down on top of me. “I know what you want,” she said, “I know what all you fuckers want.” Reaching between her legs, she slipped my dick back inside her, then leaned forward to bring her lips close to my ear. She pressed down and took me deep while she whispered. “This is all a show,” she said, “but I’m done with it. I decided that tonight, down there in the bar while I was talking to you. Decided that I was going to smother him with a pillow.” My dick softened, but she didn’t seem to notice and continued to grind as she whispered. “You got a room, right? I’ll fuck you in your room with no one watching. Just let me go there with you tonight.”

  I whispered back to her. I thought she didn’t want Dave to hear from the other room. “A show, you said. For Dave? He makes you do this?”

  “Not for Dave. Fuck Dave. For my husband. There’s no other way for him to get off. Not anymore. You come yet?” She continued to grind against me even though I slipped out of her moments before. I lied to her, saying that yes, I had come. “Good. Help me do the thing with the pillow, and I’ll fuck you again.” When she spoke again, she spoke without the whisper. “That felt good. Now I have to pee.” She kissed me without any passion and stood up. I watched the way she looked at the closet as she walked to the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

  Still naked but now full of anger, I stood up and regarded the closet. I had no intention of helping her smother someone with a pillow. All this on film, too. She probably wanted to convince me to do it. Get it on film. I would take the cassette out of the camera, or better yet, I thought as I took the handle of the closet’s louvered door, I’d take the camera itself. With that, I opened it.

  I opened all the way and saw inside.

  Clothes caught my attention first. The closet at first appeared to contain nothing but clothes, but unlike the piles of dirty laundry on the bed, the
se were neatly hanging suits, all black in color, many of them covered with clear plastic marked with the name of a dry cleaner. Hanging near one of them I found a mask with woolly hair, its cartoon visage molded to look like the caricature of an African warrior, complete with a bone through the nose. I reached out to touch it. At first I expected it to feel like rubber—a cheap Halloween mask—but I felt a momentary pang of fear that it would feel like real flesh, someone’s skinned face.

  Before I could touch it, I noticed what lay on the floor.

  At first I thought it was a Halloween decoration, something like the mask.

  Then, I realized that it was moving. It was alive.

  The glinting thing I saw earlier was no camera. It was an eye, a human eye, attached to the stump of a scarred, ruined being. Whorled scars marked what remained of its flesh, and it bore only one arm, which it raised to me as if in supplication. That lone arm told me what I was seeing. I imagined the street erupting into flames as this once-whole person held up a baby freshly cut from its womb, the flesh of both bodies sizzling and blending so that someone had to cut them apart later. I knew then what lay beyond, in that other room, and I didn’t want to see it, just as I didn’t want to see the closet’s occupant. I could free him, I thought—but then he smiled, and a gob of drool ran down his face. I realized what that meant and why they had positioned the door the way they had. All of this amounted to a show for the watcher in the closet.

  The toilet flushed, and I knew I had to move fast.

  He could read it in my face, my intention to run, and he opened his mouth as if to scream, but nothing came up. He lifted his raw, crooked arm as if he could stop me, but I rushed my clothes back on and made it to the door just as Brenda was coming back into the room, her arm lifting in a way that mirrored her husband inside the closet, her mouth opening with a word that had no time to get out as I stepped outside and closed the door behind me.

  On the other side of the door, I used my weight to hold it closed as she pushed back from the other side. I could hear her curse and grunt as she struggled to get to me, and I no longer cared about what she wanted from me—to hurt me or to escape with me. Somehow I knew that if I let the door swing open, I would never again free myself of her. Strangely enough, I began to think of Abby Sinclair—how in all those fights we had, she secretly just wanted to get rid of me, but I’d become something she could never just banish on the other side of the door the way I’d just done to Brenda. I should have felt pity, I realized—pity not just for that trapped woman, but for the scarred wreck reduced to watching her fuck strangers in the closet.

  It came back to me then, what she said about smothering him with a pillow.

  I stopped holding the door, thinking it would fly open. I would go back inside and take all the pillows from the room. Take them all away so she couldn’t hurt anyone.

  But the pressure from the other side had stopped. From the other side came an awful silence.

  I tried the door handle, but of course it didn’t open. It locked automatically, and I had no key.

  I tapped gently at first. Then I rapped harder. I called her name over and over.

  When the door finally opened, Dave stood on the other side. He used his body to hold the door open as he dragged something toward the doorway.

  “Help with this, will you?” he said.

  I looked at what he dragged toward the threshold—a bag made of dirty white fabric. A laundry bag. What it held though made it difficult for him to lift.

  “I said to help me, goddammit.” He nodded toward the trash chute by the elevator.

  When I still failed to move, he said, “Motherfucker, I fought for your freedom. Now, help me out. It’s just laundry. Dirty clothes.”

  Together we struggled to pull the bag toward the latched door of the chute. Dave pulled it open, and together we managed to get the bag inside. I could feel the contours of what the bag held. It did have clothes—I could feel those—but it felt heavy, just too heavy.

  “This isn’t laundry, man,” I said.

  Dave didn’t answer. He struggled to stuff the bag all the way in. Finally, it cleared the opening, and we both waited for the sound of it striking the bottom of the shaft below. I heard nothing, but maybe Dave did. He nodded, satisfied, at something I couldn’t detect.

  “That wasn’t laundry,” I said, again.

  “Come back in and check,” he said. “The bed’s cleared off. All sent to the cleaners.”

  In the open door, Brenda reappeared. She leaned against the door jam, naked and smiling. Her left eye looked funny. It appeared puffy and red.

  “Come on in and let me finish you off.”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” she said.

  “No, thanks,” I repeated, but she had already disappeared inside the room.

  “Not coming in then?” said Dave.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Then, we need to settle up. You understand, right?”

  At first, I didn’t. When I said nothing, Dave brushed his thumb against his middle finger. Money. I owed him money.

  I took out my wallet and began counting the little money I had left, only forty-eight dollars. As I held it out to him, the door opened again. Still naked, Brenda reassumed her position in the doorway.

  But now she wore the mask I saw hanging in the closet. It had a grotesque red grin that held my gaze. I couldn’t look away, even as Dave took the money from my hand and walked back to the door. She stood aside and let him by. Her hand went up and waved to me as she let the door close between us. It closed slowly, and she kept her face in sight, the grotesque grin that could have been made with blood. Eventually, the door closed all the way, finally removing her from my sight.

  <<====>>

  AUTHOR’S STORY NOTE

  Although a work of fiction, elements of “The Watcher” really happened to me—though I was spared the more extreme moments of the story, fortunately. A chance encounter with a veteran behind a hotel in Daytona Beach actually occurred and left me shaken, but it took me several tries (and years) before I could find the right way to tell the story I needed to tell. Truth in fiction means something other than “true-to-life,” and some “truth” about the experience kept eluding me in all those other attempts. The only way I could get within striking distance of it entailed making it a more extreme horror story. Since I am a writer of dark fiction, it should come as no surprise that this is where my truth often resides. My other obstacle involved finding the right voice for the narrator. Somewhere between my third and fourth attempt to write this story, he finally revealed to me that he was African American, and something finally clicked and allowed the pieces to fall into place. As for the actual veteran who threatened to kill me on the beach, I feel a great deal of pity for him—he had a hard road to travel, and I hope he survived his journey. I’m thankful to him for giving me this story, and I want to dedicate it to him, wherever he is.

  SCRATCHING FROM THE OUTER DARKNESS

  TIM CURRAN

  From Return Of The Old Ones: Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Horror

  Editor: Brian M. Sammons

  Dark Regions Press

  After two weeks of relative silence in which the pot of the world began to boil over, Simone Petrioux heard the scratching again. This time it came from within the walls. Sometimes it came from the shadows—particularly the shadows in the corners—and sometimes from behind her or the sky overhead. And sometimes from inside people.

  * * *

  “You have a marked hyper aural sensitivity,” Dr. Wells explained to her. “A form of hyperacusis. It’s not unusual with those without sight. When one sense fails, others are heightened.”

  “But it’s beyond that,” Simone told him with a singular note of desperation. “I hear … strange things. Things I should not hear.”

  “What sort of things?”

  She swallowed. “Sounds … things echoing from another place. Busy sounds.”

  He told her that
auditory hallucinations were known as paracusia. Sometimes they were signs of a very serious medical condition. He did not use the word schizophrenia, but she was certain he was thinking it.

  “Just because you hear things others do not, does not necessarily mean there’s anything there,” he explained.

  “And it doesn’t mean anything isn’t either,” she told him. “Rocky hears it, too. How do you explain that?”

  But he couldn’t, of course. Dr. Wells was a good man, she thought, but this was beyond him. Ever since she was a child, she heard things others could not. It ran in the family. It was something of a Petrioux family curse—like the blindness—the ability to detect sounds in a frequency beyond that of ordinary human hearing. Simone had been blind since birth. Vision was an abstract concept to her. She could no more describe her acute hearing to Dr. Wells than he could describe sight to her. Stalemate.

  Of course, it really didn’t matter.

  Things had gone far beyond that point now.

  * * *

  Feeling very alone and very vulnerable, she listened for it to start again because she knew it would. There had been the two-week reprieve, of course, but now the scratching was coming again and it was more frenzied and determined than ever. Like someone’s trying to get through, she thought. Trying to dig their way through a stone wall. Scritch, scritch, scrape, scrape. That was the sound she kept hearing. It was worse at night. It was always worse at night.

  Listen.

  Yes, there it was again.

  Scritch, scritch.

  Rocky started to howl. Oh yes, he could hear it and he knew it was bad. Whatever was behind it, it was bad. “Come here, boy,” she said, but he would not. She found him over by the wall, fixated on the sounds coming from the corner. She petted him, tried to hug him, but he would have none of it. Beneath his fur, he was a rigid mass of bunched cables. “It’s okay, my big boy, it’ll be okay,” she said, but he knew better and so did she.