Journals of Horror: Found Fiction

by Todd Keisling

  To:Louis White

  From:Steven Farrel

  Re: Case # MP 0005-2013-2

  Louis -

  Excellent work on the transcription. No worries on not being able to attach it separately.

  I read the report you filed on the follow up interview with Mrs. Pasquale and her son. I understand your point of view. Clearly, this man had emotional issues. After reading both items, I sent an e-mail to the psychiatrist handling Pasquale's case to see if he can perhaps point us in the right direction in terms of what we can expect here. I've requested that he copy you when he replies.

  Thank you for doing such an excellent job in such a timely fashion. Lord knows, Mrs. Pasquale and her son have already been through enough. The sooner we can resolve this case and leave them in peace, the better.

  -Steve.

  Steven Farrel

  Captain

  Lake Green Sheriff's Office

  Homicide/Missing Person's Division

  Lake Green , Florida. 33463

  813-555-4312.

  ___________________________________________________________________________________

  ***

  ___________________________________________________________________________________

  To: Steven Farrel

  CC: Louis White

  From: Peter Kourakos

  Re: The Pasquale Investigation

  Hello gentlemen.

  I want to first thank you for providing me the opportunity to help with your investigation into Alex's disappearance.

  I have included with this email an attachment containing the notes I wrote based on the copies of the journal transcript and the follow up police interview you were kind enough to provide, Captain.

  In them, you will find I have provided a detailed analysis of the case, trying where feasible to anticipate Alex's next move.

  However, in the spirit of brevity, allow me to state my belief that - for whatever reason - Alex Pasquale left his home of his own free will in the early morning hours of February 24th, likely without the intention to return. My notes provide a more in-depth exploration into this theory, but the short version is that the clues are in the account given by the teenage son.

  Consider the factors involved: The son admitted that his new pet had apparently escaped its cage in the overnight hours, only to be found in the den the next morning, which led to the discovery that Alex was missing. An earlier entry in the journal goes into detail about Mickey performing a bizarre ritualistic “funeral” for his dead pet, a ritual that both the mother and son claim never happened and of which there is not one shred of physical proof to suggest it ever took place. This suggests Alex had begun having difficulty distinguishing between his fantasies and reality.

  Then, in his final entry, Alex wrote the name “Maestro” - the same name given to the pet he had caused the death of earlier -going so far as to wonder if he were Maestro. He also mentions something “slithering” towards him that night. This clearly indicates he was at least partially awake when the snake entered the room. The combination of his guilt and anger over his unhappy circumstances, the recent illness he wrote about (which may have been psychosomatic) and the real, probably half-glimpsed presence of the snake likely created a delusion that set him off, pushing him over an already fragile emotional boundary.

  It's all in my notes.

  I'd like to express more optimism towards a successful outcome, but in my experience I've seen too many of these cases end in tragedy, usually as a suicide.

  Still, until we have definitive answers, one must always put their best foot forward and keep hope that he may still be alive somewhere, no matter how dim the prospect may seem.

  -Dr. Peter Kourakos

  Peter Kourakos

  LMHC ,BCBA, MEd

  Suite 221

  Serenity Garden Center for Psychiatric Studies

  Lake Green, FL.

  33463.

  Author bio: D.S.Ullery has been published in Hacker's Source Magazine, Blood Reign Literary Magazine, Sirens Call Ezine, Dark Eclipse magazine and the anthology When Red Snow Melts, with a story to be included in the upcoming collection Night of the Car Nex. He lives in Lake Worth, FL with a black cat named Jason who was born on Friday the 13th.Webpage: https://twitter.com/DSUllery

  The Book of Flesh and Blood

  By Jeff O’Brien

  Case #BF1029479628

  Journal transcribed from a typewritten horror fiction manuscript found near a horror editor's dead body in Dover, NH. Author unknown.

  “Brad! Check this out!”

  “Mister Nordstrom pays us to clean his mansion, Tony. Not to touch his stuff. This little library gives me the creeps enough as it is.”

  Brad wasn’t lying. Mr. Nordstrom’s library was chock full of the macabre. Monkey skeletons, taxidermied animals of unknown species, medieval torture devices and walls lined with ancient looking books that smelled of mold. But most disturbing was the row of human skeletons lined up along one of the walls. Some looked dirty and appeared to still have chunks of meat and muscle attached. Others were clean of rot and looked merely a step away from turning to dust.

  “Don’t be a bitch dude,” Tony spat at his friend. “He’s not gonna’ get upset if we read one of his books. Just come here.”

  “Fine,” Brad grumbled.

  Tony was holding a large leather-bound tome. No title or author were anywhere to be found on the cover, only a scraggly variation of a pentacle was emblazoned on the leather surface. Attached by a string to the binding of the book was what appeared to be an ancient version of a fountain pen.

  “Looks like some pages got torn out,” Tony stated, showing Brad the good half inch of empty space between the last page and the back cover.

  “What’s with those pages?” Brad asked, giving into his curiosity. “They don’t look like paper, dude.”

  The pages were thick and strong. Tony tried to tear one out but was met by tough resistance.

  “Are you nuts?” Brad bellowed. “That thing is probably priceless! Or cursed or some shit. Just put it back.”

  “Bullshit,” Tony said with a laugh. He pointed to the words on the first page. “Looks like it’s written in blood, dude! This is awesome. I think we found the real Necronomicon or something.”

  “We’re gonna’ need to find new jobs if you don’t put it back,” Brad scolded him.

  Tony ignored his friend and began flipping through the pages.

  “Oh wow,” he said. “It’s like a journal or something that keeps getting pages added to it.” He turned to the most recent entry and started reading. “This is nuts, Brad. Maybe we should make an entry of our own.”

  “You really want to be unemployed again, don’t you?” Brad asked.

  “Whatever, dude. Come and read this with me.” Tony urged him.

  Reluctantly, Brad agreed and looked over Tony’s shoulder, reading along.

  ***

  Entry Dated

  October the Twenty-Second, Nineteen Eighty Six

  Libros de carne et sanguine, or as I now know you: The Book of Flesh and Blood.

  I have found you at last. What a fool I was to think your curse was just a legend, and that an enlightened one such as myself would be impervious to such a curse. Though cocksure I was that I’d find you, I hadn’t ever dreamed I’d be the writer of your next chapter.

  For the last five years, ever since I got word that you had been discovered and stolen from your safe place far below the Carpathian Mountains and rehidden never to be found again, I have searched high and low for you, leaving no stone unturned and no lead not followed.

  My arrogance was my downfall, as is always the case with overeducated fools like myself. Never in my tireless quest to pursue you did I ask myself the question of “should I find you?” instead of “can I find you?”. But one does not easily turn away from a quest that takes one to the deepest abysses below the earth’s surface in Alaska and highest ranges of Mount Ararat in Turkey. Eventually, a tirel
ess work ethic gives way to madness, and the pursuant is blind and deaf to the difference. Had I only listened to my assistants and partners as one by one they lost faith in me and abandoned me on our journey.

  But despite my soon-to-be death, as well as the pathetic and powerless state I find myself in now, I find it only fitting that I should thank you, oh fabled Book of Flesh and Blood. While in pursuit of you, while climbing and digging the mountains and crags and basins and canyons of this wondrous rock that no man before me saw fit to explore, I saw things that man had never even dreamed of seeing, nor should man ever be permitted to see.

  Treasures! Any sane man would have claimed his fortune right then and there on Mount Ararat when in that canyon I spotted the remains of that old ship, littered with the bones of hundreds of animals. I could have claimed victory for all men of faith and seen my way to a life of endless riches. But in my madness I carried on.

  Then in Egypt, lost in the abysmal depths of the Qatara Depression, where I found the very gate to Hell, I’d have better served myself had I found its key and let myself get sucked into Lucifer’s Den. For even that would indeed be a more desirable fate than the self inflicted torture I only moments ago endured, while the cursed demon Erich Nordstrom laughed and sipped his brandy.

  At least I can thank Erich for giving me the only legitimate tip as the book’s whereabouts and bringing my five year quest to an end.

  Time after time, after epic searches turned up no trace of the book, so called fellow archaeologists gave me word of where they believed the book to be. Fool I was for my guilelessness. All of them devils in their own right trying to throw me off course. I suppose that is only the nature of this business.

  But then Erich Nordstrom, who now sits across from where I write this very entry, informed me that he had found the book hidden away in the Great Ziggurat of Ur, and brought it back here to his estate and added it as his prize possession in his very own library.

  Welcoming me warmly as a guest in his home, he provided me a wondrous dinner prepared by his expert culinary staff, and gave me full carte blanche to the entire contents of his top-shelf liquor cabinet. By all outward appearances, I believed I had made a true ally in this cutthroat business of procuring lost and sacred relics.

  After dinner and several bourbons Erich took me to his library to finally show me the legendary Book of Flesh and Blood. Kept upon his shelf like any other of his volumes, I opened my eyes in awe as he handed me the leather-bound tome.

  Open it!, he said. I’m dying to see what’s inside!

  Any fool should have questioned the fact that the very man who possessed the book had not seen its contents. But again, lost in my own damn-fool arrogance I hastily tore the book open. After only reading and marveling at what I found on the first few pages, the book took hold of me.

  Powerless to the call of this collection of true horror stories inked in blood on the very hides of its own victims, I placed the book down and stripped myself of all clothing. With a letter opener on Erich’s desk I began cutting my skin in all the right places to make tearing the flesh from my body as simple as possible. Screaming in agony and rolling around on the floor I couldn’t stop myself from tearing every last piece of skin from my bones. Erich’s laughs and guffaws will surely haunt me all the way to whatever afterlife is soon to come, once I finish writing this macabre memoir.

  But I have babbled on too long, and now have come to the very point where I can go on no longer, as I have said all I can say about finding the miserable Book of Flesh and Blood. May the soul of Erich Nordstrom burn in the fires of Hell. And may the future of educated men be smarter then the goddamn fools or today and yesteryear, such as myself, who have turned the flesh-pages of this book.

  With regret,

  Franz Vanderbilt

  ***

  Mister Nordstrom returned home from his excavation of a cave of in the Himalayas to find that his estate had not been fully cleaned by his hired crew.

  “Damn lazy fools,” he cursed as he grimaced at the dusty corners of his front hallway.

  Though somewhat disappointed by the difficulty of finding good help these days, a smile stretched across his face as he entered his library to find two bloody skeletons on the floor next to the book, which appeared to have been filled out a bit between its covers.

  “Dammit,” he grunted. “I missed the show.”

  It truly was a wonder having watched the flesh of Franz Vanderbilt get sucked into the binding of the Book of Flesh and Blood by forces as mystical as the essence of the book itself. He had truly hoped to see such dark magic happen again some day.

  “Oh well,” he said with a sigh as he looked down upon the skeletons of his cleaning crew, then looked at the lineup of dead men that adorned the far wall of his library. “My search of Himalayas might have turned up nothing. But my collection of fools seems to have grown while I was away.”

  Author bio: Jeff O'Brien resides in Dover, New Hampshire with his wife and two dogs. When he isn't churning out comedic horror and science-fiction he is either at a Boston Celtics game or buying awesome stuff at flea markets with his wife. Contact him at www.facebook.com/authorjeffobrien

  Beyond Castle Frankenstein

  By Paula Cappa

  Case #BF 1936742266

  Journal transcribed from a letter found inside the backing of a painting.

  The ascent was precipitous, my journey a melancholy one to the ruins of Castle Frankenstein. The rough-hewn rock mansion of turrets and towers perched on a craggy hilltop over the Rhine in Darmstadt, Germany. Normally I love the soft roll of rivers but the Rhine ran rapidly this day, descending the sloping banks like a dark snake. Night would close on me soon, so I hurried to the cobbled-stone chapel that sat adjacent to the Castle. I opened the thick wooden door. This was no ordinary chapel—windowless, gloomy with iron-barred arches and a narrow passage to a sunken altar. The dead air clogged my throat as my solitary footsteps kicked up vaporous dust that I might have taken for hooked ghosts. I knocked on the wall to announce my arrival. Or maybe I knocked to calm my nerves because I had come here to observe the ghost of an old painting that once lived here. There are such things as phantoms of paintings. Art is a powerful entity and I firmly believe that all paintings possess a spirituality that lingers in our world wherever they have taken residence. And I had come to Castle Frankenstein’s chapel to know this phantom.

  During the late 1800s, hung inside a crumbling recess of this chapel, an oil on canvas, the Casa Magni, had lived—unseen and forgotten for decades, as was intended by its original owner. That is until the Castle Frankenstein was renovated during the 1960s. Until Dawo Enterprises of England obtained the painting and stored it under black drapes for years. Until I, Robert Beauclerk, purchased the Casa Magni at an auction in Buckinghamshire.

  The artist Francesco Bagnara (1784–1866) had rendered the scene on a tall canvas. The Casa Magni was an Italian villa at San Terenzo on the Bay of Lerici. At full view, and in good light, the villa reveals itself as a rectangular, hollow-eyed head about to be swept away into the dark Mediterranean. I became mesmerized by the high white structure of multiple arches looming in overwhelming proportion. Spectacular grey waves convulse and pitch into the toothy mouth of the first story. The anger in those waves would not let my eyes rest. On the second story, shafts of bleached stone with gaping windows suggest a protruding boney forehead, fractured, and lifted toward a lonely horizon.

  A haunting beauty, the painting deserved the living world; I had to have it. Clearly, Bagnara’s painting had sustained the usual damages, and I had fully intended to commission the restoration of the art for my collection. While removing the damaged framework, I found a thick double backing—unusual for that time. What was more unusual was a thinly folded, yellowed handwritten letter hidden between the backings. Of course, I opened it. I knew immediately I had discovered something more than unusual—I had discovered the soul of the painting.

  I contacted an associate, H.P. Ebers of the Bri
tish Institute of Graphologists, and submitted the three-page document to him for examination. Ebers confirmed it to be a correspondence from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein, handwritten in 1850 to her then dead husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

  Streaks of faded ink ran at odd angles. Lines of text slanted in blurry paragraphs with blocks of space apparently at pauses, and the signature hung anxiously scribbled down the final page, missing the -a and -y.

  I learned that the Shelleys had lived in the Casa Magni from April to July in 1822. On July 8, 1822, the poet drowned when his sailboat, Ariel, crashed during a storm in the Mediterranean.

  This is the letter that Mary Shelley concealed behind the painting of the Casa Magni.

  July 8, 1850

  To my dearest love, Shelley,

  There is something working in my soul, which I fear. This dark reality moves and breathes. I cannot shed it. So, write I must. You know how pen in hand makes my thoughts flow fast. Write, write, write, when adversity strikes. I learnt that from my father. Forgive my spidery script. My hand shakes and my joints are cramped as I struggle to see by this dim candlelight.

  I write this night for I am seeking your ghost, my Shelley. I have come to believe that a force between the living and the dead can manifest if both are willing. Please, come to me, as a shadow or a dusty light. I must see you one final time before my own death. One more embrace? You do still love me?