He looked out across a sea of faces assembled at the graveside and was met by the cold and steady gaze of his mother’s tormentor. Unlike her, Sam was under no illusion that some shred of decency still inhabited the man. It was a belief that had served him well, and which had protected him from the mental cruelties Victor had visited upon him in the past. He had come to learn that love and affection were weaknesses to be exploited. Any emotions that threatened to expose this weakness, therefore, were swiftly subjugated. They were, after all, Victor’s very lifeblood; the perversity from which he took his pleasure.
Mercifully, the timeworn platitudes of the ageing priest came to an end, and Sam picked up a handful of earth and threw it casually into the open grave before turning to leave.
A brawny hand clamped onto his shoulder. “And where do you think you’re off to, boy?” Victor asked.
His pretext that he promised his aunt he would visit after the service, because she had been unable to attend owing to illness, was met with suspicion. Victor had no recollection whatsoever of the boy having mentioned it to him, though what with the funeral arrangements and all it was possible it had slipped his mind. Reluctantly, he gave his consent and cautioned his son to return home at a reasonable hour - a warning Sam knew was not to be taken lightly.
An overriding sense of purpose urged Sam on past his aunt’s cottage and beyond the environs of the village. Ill though she was, he saw little use in calling in on the retired psychologist, since her usefulness had long outlived its purpose.
The doting, old bird had never once suspected the true reason for his visit earlier that month, hadn’t even noticed the missing book he had taken from her study. Within its pages lay the means of assuaging his all-consuming hatred for his father and the terrible nightmares that had plagued him from infancy.
Although he knew what violence he would like to do to his father, Sam was under no illusions that he was capable of such an act. However, through hypnotic access to his mind’s most frenetic imaginings he would learn to commit with impunity in his dreams what he feared he was incapable of doing in reality.
On the bleak and inhospitable outcrop of Maelon Tor an age-old shepherd’s lean-to played host to the enterprising young thief. A warming fire burned beneath its single-pitched roof, illuminating the pages of his ill-gotten book. He paused momentarily to rekindle the dying flames, only to realise that dusk had settled in around him. The hour was late and he knew full well that his absence from home carried a heavy price - though what form it would take was open to question, given the Machiavellian nature of Victor’s mind.
Fearing his father would be scouring the streets for him, Sam skirted the village via the old drover’s lane, his pace slackening appreciably as he neared the rear of the house.
Unlike the ground floor view - hidden behind a high stone wall - the upper storey was clearly visible. Gratified that no discernible light could be seen from its windows he opened the ponderous oak gate and peered through into the garden. The entire place was in darkness.
Inching his way up the gravel path towards the back door, he caught sight of something glinting in the moonlight. There, snaking its way across the lawn and round the gable, where it was ultimately lost from view, was a streamer of magnetic tape. Puzzled as to how it had gotten there, he followed its path and came upon the glowing embers of a dying fire. Scattered around its edges lay the charred remains of his most cherished possessions.
His father’s latest act of attrition stripped him bare of the complacency that had lulled him into the false sense of security that had cost him so dearly. It was a wake up call. The few things he held dear in his life, his music, his books, and assorted role- playing games, had been consigned to the flame.
Victor peered down from behind a second storey window, watching, patiently waiting, and gloating in the night shadows.
Experience had taught Sam that physical confrontation with his black- hearted father was ill advised. He still bore the scars from a previous encounter when, at the age of eight, Victor had forced him to drown his beloved pet kitten for having soiled the drawing-room carpet. The hapless creature had struggled frantically to escape the icy waters of the rain barrel, tearing the flesh from Sam’s arms and wrists. In the end it was Victor himself who finished the job. Hauling the tiny, sodden, creature up by its hind legs, he smashed its skull against the barrel.
The livid scars served as a permanent reminder to Sam just how inhuman his father could be. But some wounds ran deeper, were less obvious. Left unattended they had become a cankerous growth that time alone could no longer dispel. His ardent hatred of Victor raged within him. Soon it would find release in the deepest recesses of his mind.
An inveterate gambler, Victor would often drive into the city at weekends to indulge his passion. This involved a considerable journey of some hours, affording Sam ample opportunity to put into practice all he had learned. At the eleventh hour, however, the elements themselves seemed ready to conspire against him, as a menacing storm front crept in from the north.
For a while it looked as though Victor might cancel his customary visit into the city. Awaiting the old man’s final decision, therefore, was more than Sam felt he could endure, his frayed nerves having reached maximum breaking point long ago. But habituation and addiction were potent forces to be reckoned with, and Victor’s defiant announcement that neither God nor the elements were going to prevent him from making his usual rendezvous came as a welcoming relief to the teenager.
Less than fifteen minutes had elapsed since his father’s departure and Sam was already feeling the effects of his auto-hypnotic induction, the incessant tick-tock of the metronome sounding the passage of time as he gradually drifted deeper into an altered state of consciousness.
Step-by-step he gave himself up to the soporific beat, his consciousness sinking inward to the synchronous pulse of his heart until, at length, even this last, tenuous link between reality and dream-state was relinquished and the gentle stirrings beneath his eyelids heralded the onset of his fantasy.
He looked about as the shadowy perceptions of his dreamscape gradually fused and blended into a cohesively familiar scene. He scanned the room for the telltale signs of surrealism that frequently inhabited his naturally occurring dreams. Nothing was amiss. All was as it had been prior to sleep. Elated by his god-like capacity, he felt that there was nothing to which he could not now aspire.
The sound was indistinct at first; an out-of-place grating that encroached upon the dreamscape. It grew louder and more defined with each passing second until there was no mistaking its source – a latchkey! Someone in the real world was entering the house.
He awoke with a start. Dazed and confused, and in a blind panic, he leapt from the chair and made a beeline for the dining room to replace the disengaged telephone receiver. The last thing he had wanted was to be disturbed at some crucial point in his experiment. His caution, it now seemed, was going to be his undoing.
Catching him in mid-flight, Victor bellowed, “What the hell’s going on? And what’s the bloody phone doing off the hook?”
Sam’s only reply was an ineffectual stammer, which Victor was in no mood to hear. A stinging backhand sent Sam reeling against the wall, a second blow glancing off his temple before he could regain his senses.
Vivid flashing lights burst before his eyes as a searing hot pain ripped through his skull. He sank to his knees and cowered like a whipped pup, certain that a further barrage of blows would follow.
“Get the fuck up!” Victor snarled, crimson faced and hauling him to his feet. “Now,” he demanded, “either you tell me what the hell you’re up to or I beat the shit out of you. Which is it going to be?”
No matter what he said or did Sam knew a good beating was on the cards and braced himself for what was to come.
Outside, a car horn blared and a voice called out impatiently, “C ‘mon Vic! At this rate the casino’ll be closed before we get there!”
His strangle hold on the teen
ager eased. Pushing him against the wall and stabbing him painfully in the chest with his finger he threatened, “I don’t have time for this now, but you can be damned sure it isn’t over yet. Now get the hell out of my sight before I change my mind.”
Picking up the wallet he had absent-mindedly left behind, he took his leave.
That night Sam brooded in the darkness of his room, forlorn images of his childhood firing across the synapses of his fevered brain, his mind caught up on a maelstrom of internecine rage and murderous desire.
The pain in his temple was beginning to recede. He felt groggy and his eyes were leaden. The time had arrived to enter into his dreamscape before his father’s return.
He was not alarmed, sometime later, to find himself standing at the foot of the stairs with a large kitchen knife in hand; this much he had planned. The distant rumbling that rolled across the night sky and the intermittent flashes of brilliance radiating from the turbulent thundercloud overhead were, however, not of his making. They had come unbidden into his dream, as if by some unconscious directorship. The uncertainty of it thrilled him in a way he had never know and he threw caution to the wind, allowing himself to be carried along on a current of hypnotic indeterminacy.
A bolt of scintillating light crackled earthward, chasing the shadows from Victor’s room. In that briefest of moments Sam caught sight of his prey. The ridiculous sight of his pot-bellied father slumped naked across the bed, his flaccid prick poking out from between his thighs, brought Sam to a halt. Divest of his fatherly trappings, Victor presented an altogether sad and comical figure, an absurd antithesis of the fear-inspiring monster he knew and loathed.
He inched closer to the bedside, the breath he had held in check suddenly bursting from his tired lungs.
Victor stirred and Sam’s heart almost erupted from his chest.
What was he afraid of? There was no way his father could hear him, unless he himself willed otherwise.
He drew nearer, the lethal blade poised to strike. Then the moment was upon him, the blade driving deep into unresisting throat tissue. In a single stroke he severed the windpipe and carotid artery.
Victor’s eyes sprang wide in bemused horror. Like a fish out of water his mouth opened and shut mutely. He grasped futilely at the obscenely gaping wound to stem the crimson fountain that hastened his end as Sam looked on, his face a mask of psychotic amusement.
Sam had never seen so much blood, but he knew this was how he had imagined it and so it was. Rivulets of the stuff coursed down the walls and dripped from the ceiling onto the bedspread where Victor writhed in the final paroxysms of agony. It was all Sam had wished it to be.
Though all too brief, the encounter had proven extremely gratifying and Sam felt somewhat reluctant to return to the banal existence that awaited him in the real world. Nevertheless, he found consolation in the knowledge that there would be other nights and other scenarios to explore. Nothing was beyond him now.
Initially, he was not overly alarmed at his seeming inability to end the auto-hypnotic dream state. Under certain circumstances - such as his own, in which he had achieved a euphoric state - a time- lapse between command and response could occur.
Outside, the storm continued to rage, despite his efforts to quell it. Then it dawned on him with horrifying clarity that this was the selfsame storm that only hours earlier had almost kept Victor indoors.
He raised a tentative hand to his temple and winced. The pain was all too real and confirmed the bitter irony and horror of his situation.
A tidal wave of stark reality crashed in on him, sweeping before it any hope of salvation. Even the darkest labyrinths of his mind could not conceal what he had done. There was no awaking from a living nightmare, nor escape from the perpetual abyss of insanity that had fragmented his mind.
The Fetch
Eve Landru peered out of her window into the gathering dusk. The same shadowy figure she had seen the night before was there again, skulking behind the hedgerow that overhung the cemetery railings. Visibly shaken, she snapped shut the curtains as he pulled down the brim of his fedora and slipped deeper into the shadows.
Double-checking that every door and window was firmly secured, she took up her studies again, but the disquieting thoughts of her Peeping Tom persisted. After only a few minutes at her laptop she gave up on her thesis and pulled down the lid. It seemed pointless to continue when her mind was clearly elsewhere.
Shoving the laptop to one side, she leant forward and picked up the silver framed photo of her late parents. A solitary tear traced its way down her cheek as she stroked the glass.
Even the prospect of a good night’s rest was slim. Over the last several weeks she had been plagued by nightmares and she feared what new terrors awaited her. Only now could the twenty-year-old fully appreciate how isolated she had become. Her diffident nature and the recent death of her parents had left her friendless and alone. There was no one to whom she could turn for help.
The sudden blare of a passing car’s horn shook her from her thoughts.
‘What a mess,’ she thought as she took in the piles of discarded books scattered about her, “What was it you used to say, mom; ‘a place for everything and everything in its place?’”
Returning the photo to its rightful spot on the coffee table, she began the onerous task of tidying up after herself. Within minutes her chore was done and, reluctantly, she made her way to bed.
The next morning she awoke bathed in sweat and with the odour of urine in her nostrils. Even an early shower could not wash away her sense of debasement as she sobbed, pulling the sodden sheets from her bed.
There seemed neither rhyme nor reason for the nameless horror that pursued her through the labyrinths of her dreams. Even the recent appearance of her stalker could not account for her nightly terrors. They had begun long before she had even become aware of him.
Shortly before 8:30 a.m. she heard a gentle rapping at her door. Un-securing the safety latch, she opened up. Outside stood a tall, brindled haired man carrying a briefcase. He looked to be in his early thirties.
He smiled warmly, enquiring, “Miss Eve Landru?”
Eve regarded him with suspicion. “Yes. Can I help you?”
The stranger looked with pity on the careworn, young woman framed in the doorway.
“The thing is, Eve, I think that I may be able to help you,” he said, releasing the catches on his briefcase.
“I’m sorry, but whatever it is you’re selling I’m not interested. Now if you don’t mind I ha-”
“Oh, but I’m not selling anything. I’m merely conducting enquiries into this man’s whereabouts,” he cut in, pulling a worn photograph from the briefcase and handing it to her. “I think you may have come across him recently.”
“Yes. I remember him!” - looking again at the photograph - “It’s hard to forget those creepy eyes. He was here a few weeks ago selling religious tracts or something.”
Handing it back to him she added, “He was very pushy and wouldn’t leave until I’d bought something from him. He had a curious name, too…”
“Wormwood? Eli Wormwood?” he interrupted.
“Yes, that was it! You’d think I would’ve remembered a name like that, wouldn’t you Mr …?”
“Forgive me,” he said, “my name’s Kahn, Emile Kahn.”
Eve noted the lack of a formal title preceding the name. “Oh, so you aren’t from the police then?”
“No, I’m not,” He shuffled uneasily on his feet. “But it is true to say that I’ve been keeping my eye on you for some time now.”
Eve’s heart almost burst from her chest. “Oh, God! You’re the creep whose been following me around!”
A pre-emptive foot in the doorjamb stopped her from slamming the door in his face. He grimaced in pain, dropping his briefcase. “Please wait! You’ve got to understand, you’re in great danger!”
“Go away or I’ll phone the law!” she screamed, slamming the door agonizingly hard against his foot again.<
br />
Emile threw up his arms in submission, “Okay! Okay! I’m leaving, but that won’t stop the nightmares!”
She ceased her frantic assault. Maintaining a firm grip on the door she asked, “My nightmares? How do you know about my night-?”
“Because you’re not the first this has happened to,” he cut in. “There were others just like you. I tried to help them, too. They went through the same things you’re going through, and things are going to get much worse.”
“‘Others’? What ‘others’?”
Emile felt the pressure on his foot ease a little. He was beginning to make some headway. Stooping, he picked up several newspaper cuttings that had spilled from his briefcase and passed them through the crack of the doorway.
He heard the shuffling of the papers as Eve studied them, then her voice, “My God! All these women are dead!”
“Yes, they are and they’re all Wormwood’s victims. Look at the dates on the cuttings, Eve, they go back more than fifty years.”
He heard the rustling of papers again, then, “I don’t understand what this has to do with me though.”
“Look at their pictures. Don’t you see the uncanny resemblance between them and you?”
There was a long silence in which Emile pressed home his advantage, “Look, Eve, If I’d wanted to cause you any harm do you think I would choose to confront you in broad daylight and on your own doorstep? It doesn’t make sense. Surely that must tell you something of my intentions.”
“I … I guess so.” she said, uncertainly.
“Please let me help you, Eve!” he begged. “I’m the only one who can!”
Whether through lack of sleep, or an overriding need for human companionship, Eve stepped aside and ushered him into her home. Imprudent though her action was she still had the foresight to leave the door ajar. One wrong move and she’d be out of there in a shot.
As she showed Emile into the living room, he noticed the pile of books stacked neatly on the table.
Strange Dominions: a collection of paranormal short stories (short story books) Page 6
