Midnight Paths: A Collection of Dark Horror

by Joe Hart

The light continued to brighten until it lit up the entire area inside the car. It grew and grew in brilliance, and Carolyn shaded her eyes with her bloodied hand to block it.

  There was a flash so bright that it lit up afterimages of the car’s interior, even through her closed eyes and shielding hand. Carolyn opened her eyes when her name was spoken from several feet away.

  “Carrie.”

  It was simple. It was quiet. And it was Charlie’s voice that had said it. Carolyn blinked away the night blindness that had invaded her vision after the flash of light. A soft glow now emanated from a form several feet away. She blinked again and her sight became clear enough to see what was before her, and she gasped.

  It was Charlie. He was lying on his back, almost casually, on the roof of the car. He seemingly had squeezed through the shattered windshield. He was young again, maybe in his early twenties, when she had first met him. His dark hair hung low near his ears, and the easy smile she knew so well was on his lips. He was the source of the blue light. It seeped from his skin and enveloped him like he was soaking in some sort of shimmering glow. He was looking at her with his soft eyes, and there was love there. Even after death, he still held her on a pedestal.

  “Carrie.” He breathed the word, and it seemed to flow easily through the air and penetrated her consciousness without passing through her ears. It was as if he was speaking directly to her mind.

  “Oh God, Charlie! It’s a miracle! Help me, Charlie! I’m stuck. I need you!” She strained against the steering wheel to no avail, and then reached out to where Charlie lay on his back.

  Charlie smiled benevolently at her and nodded. “You need me?” The words again were soft and seemed to pass through her skull and into her brain without effort.

  “Yes, oh God, Charlie! I’ve missed you! Please help me, honey!” She strained her arms again as she reached around the twisted metal of the car toward the apparition of her dead husband.

  He shimmered brightly again and reached toward her. Their hands stretched, and just as they were about to touch, Charlie dropped his hand back to his side.

  Surprise bloomed across Carolyn’s face as she watched Charlie’s soft and easy smile turn to a slight frown that creased his face, as though he had been slashed with a blade and scarred.

  “Where’s your lover when you need him?” Charlie asked.

  Carolyn blinked at the words. What was happening? He had stopped reaching out for her, and now he was bringing up Jake?

  “I loved you and you tore out my heart, you worthless, money-grubbing, cheating whore.” The words were smooth and without emotion. They flew into the deepest part of her mind and rang like a struck brass bell. “I built my life around you. I worked for you, and only you. Do you know I actually hated being a mechanic? I couldn’t stand it, but it was the only job I knew how to do. I wanted to go back to school, but I put your ambitions first. Look where it got me.”

  The words had startled her at first by how they had entered her mind seemingly through osmosis, but now a rage began to build within her. Angel or not, no one spoke to Carolyn Michaels that way.

  “You pathetic excuse for a man! My only regret in our marriage is that I didn’t cheat on you sooner! Maybe you would’ve blown your head off a long time ago, and I could have had years of happiness instead of only months!” Her anger seemed to break against his calm like the swell of a storm dissipating against a wall of granite. The smell of gasoline was now cloying, almost unbearable as it thrust itself up her nose. She shook her head to clear it, hoping that her dead husband would disappear, but he remained where he was.

  Charlie smiled again at her, yet now there was malevolence in his grin as he leaned in close to her. “You pitiful waste of a woman. You don’t even know it, but your Jake’s already got a little number on the side. He’s with her right now; he called her the moment you left the clubhouse. Oh, what a catch you have there, but hey, I think you’re perfect for each other.”

  Carolyn’s rage frothed inside her and then boiled over. She lashed out with her left fist to strike the apparition, to wipe the lying words from its mouth, to send it away from her, rescue or not.

  Her engagement ring struck a piece of steel that was jutting into the driver’s-side area. Sparks flickered in the dimly lit car from the platinum ring on steel and ignited the gasoline that had been slowly creeping into the car. The flames erupted with a thump, and Charlie’s aura seemed to dim slightly in the fire as it began to make its way toward him.

  Panic filled Carolyn’s pinned stomach, and she started to struggle vainly against the carbon-fiber steering wheel, which would not move. Through the haze of smoke that began to fill the car, she could see Charlie was starting to fade.

  “Charlie! You can’t leave me here! Help me! You can’t leave me! You’re an angel, for God’s sake!” she screamed.

  Charlie suddenly intensified to a brighter brilliance of blue and slid near her through the flames, which were beginning to lick closer and closer like eager tongues. His hand reached out to cup her face, and she was surprised to feel extreme heat in his touch, almost as if there was an ethereal fire burning within him. A look of gentleness slid across his face as he stared deeply into her now-panicked, pleading eyes.

  “Darling, who said I went to heaven?”

  OLD DOG

  The old dog sat at the end of its thin rusty chain and stared balefully from under its drooping eyelids at the red-haired teenager who stood before it. Its head hung near the middle of its body, and its tail was curled in close around its back legs in a protective gesture.

  “Fuckin’ stupid dog,” the teenager muttered as he bent at his heavy waist and picked up another egg-sized stone that lay near his feet. The boy straightened and hefted the smooth rock in his right hand. His gaze swung from the rock to the yellow lab that sat at the very end of its chain in the desolate, weed-choked yard.

  In one motion the boy pulled his right hand up close to his chest and cupped it tenderly with his left, while unsteadily bringing his left leg up in a classic pitcher’s stance. His right hand arced back and over his head, then he dropped his left leg to the ground and flung the stone through the air as hard as he could. It sailed through the cool evening air and smacked solidly against the ribs of the old yellow lab.

  The dog immediately yelped in the way only dogs can, with heartfelt pain at the betrayal by its best friend. It stood and began to pace back and forth at the length of its chain, trying to get away from the ache that was forming in its side. It looked mournfully through watery eyes at the redheaded teenager, as its cries of pain echoed off of the nearby abandoned houses.

  “Ha, ha, ha, you stupid fucking dog!” yelled the teenager.

  The dog continued to pace back and forth at the end of its chain. Eventually it settled down on its side and looked with its sad eyes at the boy standing on the sidewalk.

  The boy’s laughter slowly trailed off and stopped. He glanced nervously down the deserted street to his right, and then to his left. There were no cars moving down the quiet lanes of the dead-end road. There was no one in the front yards of the houses that stood like abandoned landmarks of a long-dead past. There was no life on this street, save this old dog.

  He had waited for this moment for quite some time. His hands had started tingling in the way that was becoming familiar to him, as if he was holding a large electrical wire. He had come here often after school, riding his bike several blocks out of the way to this house so he could throw stones at the dog. His mother and father thought he was tutoring a younger kid in algebra at an afterschool program. They were so gullible. And stupid. He hated watching them in the morning, holding each other’s hands and drinking coffee together. He couldn’t stand their company.

  At least it was better since Shelly. That had put a dent in their wagon, as his friend Dean would say. He especially couldn’t stand the way his father ruffled his hair and called him “sport” as he left for work. Sometimes he imagined his father having a horrible accident on his way
to work. Maybe he would get T-boned on one of the suburban back roads. Or maybe a tire would fly off a semi and he would swerve off the interstate and into an overpass. He’d wonder if he’d be able to keep from smiling when a solemn-faced teacher or policeman took him aside and told him his father wouldn’t be coming home. Would he be able to hold back the questions that would want to come flooding out? Will it be a closed coffin? Did he burn to death?

  The redhead snickered under his breath as he looked at the dog that was staring back at him. An idea suddenly sprang to his mind. He would pretend the dog was his mother or father—their expressions were about the same sometimes. He examined the dog again and was repulsed by the condition of the animal. Its hair seemed to be coming off in clumps, and he could count four humps of vertebrae poking at the skin of its back. Each rib was clearly defined like sickle blades, and the tail was missing three or four inches from its end.

  I’ll be doing it a favor, he thought gleefully as he took a step across the brown lawn. The dead grass crackled under his feet like small bones breaking, and his red-freckled hand crept into his pants pocket and grasped the short folding knife that was hidden there. His parents didn’t know he had this either. He took it to school every day. He expected a teacher or another student to find it on him. He didn’t know what would happen if someone saw him with it, but he had ideas about what he would do to them.

  As he walked, he unfolded the blade to its full two-inch length and grinned at the old dog. “Hey, pup, how ya doin’, old boy? Had a tough time lately? Let Andy fix it for you, huh, buddy?”

  The dog glanced quickly from side to side, as if hoping to spot someone who would come to its rescue. It began to back up with the boy’s approach, and then it slowly sat on its haunches, resigned to its fate.

  The teenager smiled again, but there was no warmth there. This wasn’t the county fair or the movies. This was so much better. His hand wavered menacingly back and forth, the short blade protruding from his wrinkled fist.

  All at once, the dog began to heave in silent spasms, its eyes never leaving the face of the boy, who stopped several feet away. Its sides kept heaving, and soon the boy saw its throat convulsing. The dog’s mouth opened, and it hacked the way only dogs can do. Instead of a pool of milky white foam mixed with chewed grass, it issued forth a small black pebble, which fell to the ground between its feet.

  The boy’s mouth hung slightly open, and he huffed a short laugh before stepping forward again. As he leaned toward the sallow-eyed dog, he heard something. It was a faint buzzing like a faraway power line on a humid day. He stopped and glanced over his shoulder as he tried to discern where the sound was coming from. After a moment of searching, he looked to the ground directly below him and squatted down.

  The black pebble that the dog had hacked up wasn’t a pebble at all. It was a fly. A big gleaming black fly, the kind that sometimes looked green at the right angle or distance. The kind of fly you’d find on a windowsill or trapped between a screen and glass. It had only one wing, and several of its legs were missing. The boy looked closer, leaning nearer to the dog, which also was staring down at the fly. It was crawling across a dead leaf, two of its remaining front legs pulling it and the wing batting back and forth as if it kept expecting to rise into the air.

  The boy straightened up quickly, and his body shuddered involuntarily. He looked down at the dog, his eyes squinted with red eyebrows pulled down in a scowl. The dog stared at the fly for another moment, and then it began to heave again. The dog hacked and several more maimed flies flew from its mouth. They hit the ground and began to crawl in the same direction as the first, toward the boy’s sneakered feet.

  He took a step back, and his mind rebelled at the spectacle and against the thoughts slowly surfacing like bodies in a swamp. He stared at the flies. They were all missing either one or both wings. As he squinted further, he realized some were even missing heads.

  The dog was heaving again, and the boy could see something dark in its throat, something dark and furry.

  A kitten fell free of the dog’s mouth and uncurled from the tight ball it had tucked itself into. Its fur was black and speckled with two white spots on its chest. Its face slowly turned toward the boy, and that’s when he made the first utterance since he had spoken to the dog. It was a small choked sound, as if a whimper had tried to escape his throat but failed.

  The kitten’s eyes and lips were gone. They had been crudely cut away, leaving two gaping red holes and a crimson grin that highlighted just how white its small needle-like teeth were. It began to limp in the boy’s direction. It was limping, he realized, because it was missing its front right foot, the one he had cut it off when he was eleven.

  The boy started backing away from the scene before him, but the dog’s hacking made him pause again. In horror, he watched to see what the beast produced next. Two more mangled kittens fell from the dog’s mouth. One had a broken back and dragged its useless legs behind it as it crawled. The other was almost fully skinned, its small pink muscles and tendons exposed to the cool fall air.

  In the background of the macabre display, the dog was hacking almost constantly now. Several puppies issued forth, their intestines trailing after them like forgotten leashes. A dozen white rats scurried out of the dog’s convulsing jaws and began to make their way in the boy’s direction, even without the aid of their heads.

  The teenager took another step back, his heel hooking in a branch that he was stepping on with his other foot, and he fell heavily onto his ample bottom. His breath whooshed out of him, and he quickly scrambled onto his stomach as he tried to crawl away. Pairs of small, sharp fangs and claws sunk into the tender skin of his left calf, and he shrieked with pain as he glanced down to his leg with bulging eyes.

  The skinned kitten had caught up with him and was perched on his lower leg, its black eyes glaring accusingly at him. He had killed it when he was twelve. He had fed it milk behind their garage, until one day he had taken it into the woods behind their house and returned two hours later, his knees covered in dirt stains and hands bloodied to the wrists.

  Now, that kitten was gnawing hungrily on his calf, drawing his blood. The boy kicked out with his opposite foot and felt the kitten’s body tear loose from his pants leg with a rip.

  Two more half-moons of pain blossomed on his right hamstring, and he realized the puppies had caught up with him. They were biting over and over into the soft flesh there, and he screamed as he felt a chunk of muscle tear and separate from his leg.

  He flipped onto his back and scooted away from the dozens of slaughtered animals, a thick line of blood now running from the bottom of both pant legs. If he could just get up and get to his bike, but his muscles were now betraying him. They held no strength to stand, and it was all he could do to slide backward on his rump. He risked a glance over his shoulder, and cursed loudly through thick tears when he saw that he was still half a dozen yards from where his bike was parked on the sidewalk.

  A loud snapping sound drew his blurred vision back to where the dog still sat. Its lower jaw had broken loose from its skull and was beginning to unhinge like an anaconda. The boy squeezed his eyes shut. If he willed this away, it would be gone when he opened his eyes. If he truly believed that this wasn’t real, it wouldn’t be. This was the real world. Dogs did not cough up dead animals that started moving. Dead kittens didn’t bite, and headless rats had no navigational sense. It just couldn’t be.

  When he opened his eyes, the scene hadn’t changed much. However, for some reason the animals had all stopped to watch him, both those with eyes and those without. They stood in small semicircular rows in front of him like some ghoulish theatre where he was the star on stage. Oh yes, they had come to see him and no one else—no one else would do.

  The dog was hacking again, and though he didn’t want to look, there was no stopping his eyes from flashing to where the old mutt sat. This time the dog was heaving with its elongated jaws pointing toward the deepening dark of the evening s
ky, and when the boy saw what was emerging from the dog’s mouth, his heart stuttered and a scream began and quickly died in his chest.

  Small pale fingers gripped the edges of the dog’s jaws as though its mouth was the lip of a well or some sort of portal. On some level the teenager believed it was just that: a portal. All other conscious thoughts were swept away by the sight before him. The hands attached to the fingers gripped and pulled, and a small wet crown of dark hair began to emerge from the dog’s throat. The hair gave way to thin white shoulders and a stunningly colorful yellow-and-pink bathing suit. Small, gray-tinged legs finally slid from the mouth of the dog, and the form of a little girl lay twitching on the ground amid the dead branches and curled leaves.

  “Sh-Sh-Sh-Shelly?” The name escaped from his lips before he could stop himself.

  The shaking form on the ground suddenly stiffened at the sound of his voice. Her head tilted up from the earth, and he could feel eyes locked on his own through the tangle of the dark hair. The small arms reached out, and the white wrinkled hands pushed the form into a kneeling position.

  Raisin fingers, his mother had called them, he remembered—the way the skin looked after being in water for too long. How many times had she said that when taking him out of the bath? The little girl’s raisin fingers were now reaching for him as she gained her feet.

  His dead little sister began to walk across the brown yard toward where he was lying helplessly, half surrounded by the animals he had tortured and killed.

  “Shelly, I didn’t see you fall in!” his voice shrieked from between clenched teeth. He tried to get one of his feet beneath him, but both of the eviscerated puppies issued growls much too deep to have come from their vocal cords. He dropped back onto his backside quickly.

  “Mom was on the phone inside! It was her fault! I didn’t mean it! Please!” He began to slide on the rough ground, but his strength faded again, and he gave up trying to move. Tears streamed down his freckled beet-red face as the pale corpse of his sister moved closer and closer, one unsteady step after another.