Collected Christmas Horror Shorts (Collected Horror Shorts Book 1)

by Tim Curran

  Tears streamed from Callum’s eyes. He had no idea how this vile creature knew his darkest secrets.

  “What kind of man let’s his grandmother think she’s lost her wedding ring when he’s sold it to pay his cocaine dealer? Oh dearie me, Callum. You have been a naughty boy. But do you know what? Santa knows every bad thing that you’ve ever done and once you’re on his naughty list there’s only one way to get your name taken off it.” The elf turned his attention towards Jess. “You look a little uncomfortable sweetie. Let me put you out of your misery.” He released her wrists and using both hands snapped her neck. Her head fell to one side like a marionette with snipped strings. She collapsed to the floor. “Such a shame. Her only crime was being with you, but such is life.”

  The elf knelt next to Callum and put his face close. His breath caused the broken man to recoil. “Santa was very disappointed when you told all the kiddies that he was dead. Don’t you know you shouldn’t make Santa angry? He has a very bad temper when he gets upset and it’s my job to help him deal with his naughty list.”

  Bile burned its way up Callum’s throat and he coughed and spluttered, igniting fresh flames of pain in his jaw. His mouth flapped wildly but no words came forth to beg for salvation.

  “Save your breath Callum. It’s going to be a long night and I’ve got a few friends waiting to meet you.” Malgath walked over to the window and yanked it open. Icy air flooded the room carrying with it the sound of singing.

  Jingle bells. Jingle bells. Jingle all the way…

  “Up here boys,” called the elf. “It’s time for a little festive fun and games…”

  The End

  About the Author

  Suzanne lives and works in the wild and wonderful county of Cornwall. She has a taste for all things erotic and this is a fundamental element of her writing. She usually writes erotic fiction but has recently been seduced to the dark side by some very bad people who have tempted her to try her hand at horror. The story in this anthology is a direct result of her seduction. She hopes you enjoy it and she invites you join her on her facebook page.

  https://www.facebook.com/suzannefoxerotica/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

  In The Bag

  By

  Tim Curran

  So it’s Christmas Eve and the dirty snow falls on the dirty city, making a bad situation worse for the street people who huddle under ratty blankets on street corners and shiver in piss-stained cardboard boxes in narrow, trash-blown alleys. Through the bitter wind and swirling snowflakes comes Johnny Puckett, pushing his old grocery cart. Squeak-squeak-squeak! You can hear it coming a block away, on account of the bad wheel which will never be fixed.

  Johnny pauses, resting, because it’s no easy bit on a night like this. His breath puffs out in rolling white clouds as he warms his hands and surveys the streets. He winces inside as he sees the homeless pressed together for warmth.

  Some live on the streets by choice, others are mentally ill or elderly, stewpots or junkies, war vets whose brains are scrambled from combat, the unemployable, the disenfranchised, and the forgotten.

  Funny. Seems like there are more every year.

  Johnny sees a Lexus sedan drive by followed by a high-end SUV that splatters gray road slush at his feet. Some have so much and others not a damn thing.

  Go figure.

  He looks from the bums on the corner sharing bottles of Formula 44D and cans of Sterno to the bag inside his cart, the gray sack.

  It’s the most wonderful time of the year, he thinks.

  From beneath the canopy of a department store, he hears strains of John Lennon singing “Merry Xmas (War is Over)” as he is pushing out into the storm.

  “Yeah, so this is Christmas,” he says under his breath. “And what the fuck have you done?”

  He stands there, a rail-thin black dude with squinty eyes set in a face marred by street life: old knife scars, razor cuts, a sandpaper complexion, and a twisted nose that was broken in a fight and never set properly. He wears a dingy, soiled Santa suit he pulled out of a dumpster whose white fur trim has gone the color of slate. Fishing out an old Sucrets tin, he selects one of the choice cigarette butts he has collected. Lighting up, he thinks, hey, a good one. A Camel only half-smoked.

  When he’s done, he pushes on down the sidewalk, ignoring the dirty looks he gets from shopkeepers. That’s okay, that’s okay. He comes around the corner and smells hot food, seasoned and succulent. The juice runs in his mouth and a tiger roars in his belly.

  “Hey, Johnny!” a voice calls.

  It’s Mr. Santorini over in his sheltered cul-de-sac, still at it with his food cart beneath the red-striped umbrella despite the weather. And Johnny knows why. His wife died seven long years ago and his kids never call. It’s only the cart that keeps him fluid, keeps him from begging with the others and gives him a sense of purpose.

  Johnny wheels over there. “Merry Christmas, Mr. S. How’s business tonight?”

  “Not bad,” says the little old man. He’s compressed by the years, worn thin as sticks, shivering and stomping his numb feet but never giving in. “Two things you can count on come Christmas Eve, Johnny. People gonna want to eat and they gonna want to get drunk.”

  He talks on and on about the weather, blizzards he’s seen other years, friends he’s buried and will never see again. But Johnny can’t pay attention. It’s those Italian sausages. Nobody makes ‘em like Mr. Santorini. Slow-smoked, seasoned with a family recipe straight out of Naples, then pressed hot and juicy into a butter-soft deep-fried bun, slathered with onions and peppers, melted provolone and some kind of sauce that’s sweet and hot and sour all at the same time.

  Mr. Santorini prepares one and hands it to Johnny, foil-wrapped.

  “No, no,” Johnny protests. “Ain’t got no scratch, Mr. S.”

  The old man laughs. “And on Christmas Eve, you don’t need any. Enjoy.”

  Johnny does and it's complete mouth-orgasm. His taste buds tap-dance on his tongue. His stomach grows teeth. Then it’s gone, and he’s licking his fingers; a beautiful torrid zone of warmth at his core.

  “You handing out goodies again this year, Santa?” Mr. Santorini asks.

  “Was, Mr. S., was. Ran fresh out.”

  “Well, bless you, Johnny! You’re one of the good ones.”

  Johnny’s not so sure about that, but he does render a service; he does at that. And it goes far beyond the cheap combs, scarves, and slippers he hands out to the destitute every year.

  Twenty minutes later, still warm inside from the kindness of Mr. Santorini, Johnny cuts off West 23rd into an alley, knowing what waits there. He goes anyway because he needs to.

  He brushes snow from his face and shakes himself like a wet dog. Christmas…damn the chill of it! He spies a snow-covered refrigerator box pushed real snug-like between a dumpster and a row of green plastic recycling bins that are overflowing.

  “Kathleen,” he says. “Kathleen, it’s time.”

  There’s a scrambling sound in the box like rats fighting, a raw-lunged tubercular coughing that becomes a gagging and then a wheezing.

  Kathleen claws her way out like an ogre from a cave. She snarls at Johnny, and spits at him. She stands uneasily on feet wrapped in rags and stuffed in bread bags, secured with sealing tape. She’s a bestial, hunched-over, delirious troll in a threadbare, olive-drab overcoat encrusted with feces and other nameless stains. Her face is caked with filth. It clings to her cheeks, fills the crevices and deep-set wrinkles like mud. Her eyes are feral, her hair ratty steel wool. Her cracked lips part, revealing splintered yellow-brown teeth broken into stubs. There is black grit seamed between them.

  She growls.

  She hisses.

  Johnny knows she’s crazy so he keeps his distance. Whatever she once was, she’s an animal now. Rabid, lips slavered with white foam, fingers like black split claws, mind sucked into a whirlpool-pit of decay, dementia, and delusion, she’s ready to fight for her lair.

  But Johnny’s voice, like a co
oling balm to her fevered mind, was calming. “It’s all right now, Kathleen. Everything’s gonna be all right now. Look in the bag and know peace.”

  Kathleen is unsure of his words.

  She is a deranged territorial beast used to fighting for those few scant pathetic possessions she can call her own. Slowly, though, she mellows. She can sense something in Johnny’s form, his intent. Something in the placid, sad pools of his eyes. There is mercy there and though she is unfamiliar with it, it moves her.

  “That’s it, Kathleen,” he says softly. “In the bag. There’s something for you in the bag.”

  She advances to the cart, pointing at it, jibbering, jabbering. Drool runs down her chin and tears well in her eyes. She remains uncertain. Now she reaches into the cart, placing her hands on the bag, the gray canvas sack. She strokes it lovingly. There is confusion in her rheumy eyes. It does not feel like canvas...it is warm, pliable. It feels like—

  Whatever the bag is and whatever it isn’t, it opens now like lips sliding back to expose gums and huge teeth. Kathleen shrieks and the mouth darts forward with incredible speed, faster than the strike of a rattlesnake. Before she can hope to escape, she is pulled in up to her shoulder blades. The jaws close like a man-trap, serrated teeth piercing her, cracking through vertebrae and severing her spine. She flops limply like a crushed rat in the jaws of a mastiff...then she is drawn into the sack.

  There are crunching sounds from within, chewing sounds. Then a gurgling noise like the agitator of a washing machine. Before the lips of the sack close, a jet of blood sprays into the air.

  Johnny can feel wet, warm droplets break against his face. He staggers back, sickened as always.

  The sack is stained a vibrant, Technicolor red. Then slowly, slowly, the stain is completely absorbed. The sack is just a sack again.

  Breathing hard, Johnny pushes the cart out of the alley. The sack looks deflated now, flaccid. The cycle continues.

  On 27th Street, down by Cement Park where the junkies share needles, he runs into Georgia Stan holding court with a couple winos whose eyes are like cigarette burns in vellum, reflections of the ash-pit desolation of their minds. They move on, but Georgia Stan squats on his rug, chattering away as if his friends are still there. He seems oblivious to the fact that he’s nearly covered in snow.

  “Stanny, how you doing?”

  Georgia Stan cocks his head, eyeballing Johnny, but there is no real recognition in his glassy eyes. In fact, there’s not much of anything. They are as shallow as rain puddles.

  “Got me this,” he says, holding up an empty bottle of cheap cooking sherry. “Lady...lady she gimme it. She put it in my hands, gimme it. Say...she say...you have this for Christmas. This all yours. You drink it and you don’t have to give none to others save them you want to. You can’t have what she gimme.”

  “That’s cool, Stanny. You hang onto it.”

  “I do, I do.” He looks around, narrows his eyes, seeing someone that Johnny cannot. “You ain’t gettin’ none. No sir. This mine. Lady gimme it. She gimme it for me. Not for you.”

  Stanny rocks back and forth on his rug, clutching his empty bottle as he probably will be clutching it a week from then. And he’ll be here, too, because he doesn’t have any feet, just stumps. He lost them to frostbite two winters back.

  “Well, later, Stanny,” Johnny says, pushing his cart off down the sidewalk, leaving Georgia Stan alone to speak with his friends about the lady that gave him the bottle.

  In the cart, the sack rustles.

  “No, not that one,” Johnny tells it. “Not just yet.”

  The sack trembles. It shudders. A muscular spasm sweeps through it. It is clearly agitated but Johnny is holding firm. If he doesn’t hold firm, the sack will get out of control and if too many people go missing, questions will be asked and those questions might lead back to Johnny and if they lead to Johnny they might lead to—

  But he isn’t going to think about that.

  He’s in the park now, fighting down the path, pushing through drifts and feeling that cold locked down in his bones. He makes his way over to the band shell. This is the place. This is where the desperate, the dying, and the damaged come to roost and rot. Usually, there’s dozens of junkies hanging around, begging and caging and stealing, comparing tracks and collapsed veins. But the storm has pushed them under cover—sewers and culverts, rat-infested warehouses and sterile methadone clinics and homeless shelters.

  There’s only one left just as Johnny figured.

  He doesn’t have a name and maybe he doesn’t even have a soul any longer. Whoever he was and whatever he might have been is long buried. All that’s left is this ghost. It haunts the park, the band shell, but mostly, it haunts itself.

  When Johnny steps under the light, the junkie—folded up in the corner and layered in old newspapers stained with dog piss—begins to moan.

  “Oh, Santy, Santy Claus. I’m dying inside. I’m just dying. It hurts soooo bad,” he whimpers. “God help me, but it hurts so bad.”

  He’s a living skeleton in a dirty track suit, loafers, and a split-seamed parka. His hair is black-brown frosted white, his beard like a dark smear of burnt cork, his face wrinkled like branching lightning. He’s maybe twenty or fifty.

  “You want the pain to go away, my brother?” Johnny asks him.

  “Yeah...yes, oh please.”

  “Then come to me. There’s deliverance through me.”

  The very idea of such a thing is enough to get the junkie moving. Crick-crack-crack go his ancient icy joints and ligaments. He clings to Johnny’s legs like a starving cat, the way the crippled and infirm, diseased and maimed must have clung to Jesus at Galilee.

  Johnny helped the poor nameless junkie to his feet. “In that bag. What you want is in that bag. Go ahead, my brother, reach in there. Lay your hands on what is inside and it’ll be done with. No more suffering.”

  Words. They mean very little to the junkie. Just roads that lead back into one another.

  He stands on his own.

  Grinning at Johnny, he reaches into the bag.

  Whatever’s in there, takes hold of him. It seizes his arms with blinding speed and devastating killing power, the way an owl takes a mouse. The junkie cries out, flashes a look of utter contempt at Johnny. That look says, betrayer, goddamn betrayer! I might be nothing but a used-up addict, but even I know better than to betray a fellow human being to this...thing.

  He manages to almost pull himself free, but Johnny knows there’s no getting away. The junkie’s arms are peeled down to red meat, muscle and tendon. He screams and shouts, pure pain and pure terror, then the sack pulls him in, gulping him down and there is the crunching of bones and a perfectly horrible slurping, sucking sound like a kid with a melting Popsicle.

  Then the junkie is gone, just gone.

  The sounds that follow are repulsive: a chewing, licking, crackling noise followed by a gurgling. The sack deflates. It’s larger after consuming two adults in one evening, but not by much. What it does with what it eats, Johnny does not know.

  Ten minutes later, back into the storm. The snow keeps coming down and Johnny is chilled to the bone. He grumbles and groans under his breath and then he sees Georgia Stan up the block, still ranting and raving and carrying on heated conversations with people that exist only in his mind. The sack convulses with a sound like wet leather. It is growing excited.

  In the back of Johnny’s head, a forlorn voice begins to speak: who are you to complain when others are suffering so terribly? Look at that poor, poor man. Society’s trash dumped in the streets. Have you no sympathy on this most holy of nights for the destitute, the needy, the indigent?

  Johnny knows it’s all about mercy and who is he to deny those in need? It makes him think of that night he found the sack in the attic of the ruined church. How it was just hanging there, empty and limp. And he thought, that’s a good bag for my stuff. Then he touched it. And freezing cold teeth like icepicks sank into his palm. They didn’t just pump
him full of venom that turned his willpower to mush, they filled him with the knowledge of how it had to be, how they, together, would show mercy unto the needy for that was their calling.

  Remembering, he pushes his cart over near Georgia Stan, very near.

  “Hey, Stanny.”

  Georgia Stan holds up his empty bottle. “Lady gimme it. She gimme it so it’s mine.”

  “Sure it is. She left something in this bag for you. She wants you to have it.”

  “For me? She leave it for me?”

  “Yes. Something that’s gonna make you feel all better. No more hurt.”

  Georgia Stan looks confused, uncertain. What little is left of his mind does not know what to think. In fact, he’s not sure if Johnny is even there just as he’s not sure about a lot of things.

  “For me?”

  “All for you.”

  “You gimme it. It’s mine. You gimme it. You can’t have it. It’s mine.”

  Johnny, feeling the spirit of the season moving him, boosts Georgia Stan up and tells him to reach inside that bag and he does. It’s over fast. A scream echoes off into the blizzard and there’s a mist of blood in the air, terrible sounds coming from inside the sack. But it’s over, it’s finally over.

  Johnny hears the clock at St. Anthony’s ring twelve times. It’s Christmas and it fills him, overflows him, makes tears run from his eyes. In his brain, which isn’t so right anymore, he feels good about those who will no longer have to suffer.

  God bless us one and all, he thinks.

  Later, he’s up in the attic of the ruined church at 33rd and Piedmont, in his little crib there, warming his hands before the woodstove. The sack has crawled away now. He watched it creep up the wall into the corner where it hung itself from the rafters, looking much like the cocoon it actually was. It would not move again until next year and by then it would be very hungry. Then, together, they would venture out to help the homeless and poverty-stricken.