by David Kempf
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
DARK FICTION
David Kempf
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form without prior written permission of author/publisher, except for a brief quote or description for a book review. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and places written within are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales are coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by David Kempf
ISBN: 978-1-84961-039-1
Published by: TheEbookSale Publishing
Limerick, Ireland
www.theebooksale.com
I would like to thank the following people:
Stephen Kirby, Robert Bense, Joe Camastra, Jim Tallarchyk, Jonathan Donnis, Edward Khayat, Jr., Olivia de Filipeau, Jeffrey A. Brooks, Erin Hynd, William R. Potter, Yannis Nicolas Demetriou, Eugene Sayko, Stephen Coar and George Robinson.
“Men of broader intellect know there is no sharp distinction between the real and the unreal.”
-H.P. Lovecraft
Chapter 1
Dear Dr. Wells,
My name is Christopher Wisdom. I’ve been looking forward to your class for some time. I’m very close to graduating. I saved your lecture for the final part of my education here at Donnis University. The reason is that I have already taken too many classes with professors who have never published a single work of fiction. They teach and critique and analyze other people to death but have no real accomplishments of their own. I don’t say that to offend you. I want you to know that you are the exception that proves the rule. Your novel ‘One Wish’ is a classic in dark fiction. The fact that your chosen genre is horror makes me look forward to your class all the more. I hope you got some of those writing samples that I sent to you. I look forward to be being challenged under your direction and perhaps someday learning from you privately. Ever since I was young, I have dreamed of being a protégé to a great literary mentor.
Yours truly,
Christopher Wisdom
Puzzle
By Christopher Wisdom
Jonathan Grimm always loved solving puzzles. He knew all about them. Jonathan knew the history of puzzles. He was an 80-year old widower. His children and grandchildren all lived in different states. Jonathan didn’t care. Now that he was all alone he had all the time in the world to put together more puzzle pieces.
Sometimes his eldest son would call him because he was worried about his father living all alone. He wouldn’t be able to talk very long. Jonathan would usually cut him off and explain that he was too busy to talk. He couldn’t talk because he was too busy with his jigsaw obsession. When he really wanted people to leave him alone, he would bore them with stories about the history of puzzles.
“Puzzles have been a part of America since the 1700’s. People would put maps together that came in many tiny little pieces.”
His tales of the history of puzzles always got people off the phone quickly. It also stopped people from calling him too much. That left Jonathan with more time on his hands. Time he could spend to do more puzzles.
One evening, Jonathan was working on several puzzles at once. He heard a knock on the door. He was irritated that someone would interfere with his favorite obsession. Jonathan’s curiosity eventually got the best of him. He walked to the door and opened it. He looked around and there was no one there. Then he noticed something. A box was on his doorstep. He brought it inside and opened it. The box was filled with puzzle pieces! There were no directions or cover. There were only many puzzle pieces.
“I’m going to have to solve this one!”
Jonathan started to put all the pieces together. The task of this mysterious puzzle demanded his full attention. Jonathan realized that the pieces formed a person from the waist up. It wasn’t a very big puzzle. The puzzle was only twenty four inches in length. It was about twelve inches in width. Jonathan noticed that the man in the puzzle was wearing the same clothes he was wearing. Then he put the pieces together that formed the figure behind the man. A long skeleton hand, bony finger pointing, was touching the man’s shoulder. As Jonathan finished the puzzle, he looked in horror as he saw his own face. He was the man in the puzzle.
Jonathan felt a chill in the room. He felt an ice cold hand touch his own shoulder. Jonathan stopped breathing. He looked at the mirror in front of him and saw the long skeletal hand of death that was touching him.
It was almost a month before they found Jonathan’s body. During his funeral, people were talking about who could have sent him the strange puzzle. No one ever found out who sent it. For generations after his death, people in town found other hobbies to occupy their time. No one wanted to share the same fate of seeing their own mortality, one piece at a time.
***
“You had better be careful or you’re going to turn into a real ghoul, Mr. Wisdom.”
“I think you are already a ghoul, Dr. Wells.”
Christopher couldn’t believe that after all this time he was finally in the classroom of Donnis University’s most famous literature professor Henry David Wells. The fact that such a great short story and novel author would even consider reading his work was beyond flattering to him.
“I like this story, Mr. Wisdom.” Dr. Wells looked around the rest of the classroom. Most of the students were hanging on his every word. A few of them respected him but thought he was overrated. Then there were the dummies that had to take some kind of literature class to graduate. “I asked you people to write a one page short story with a good, morbid twist ending. Mr. Wisdom has, without a doubt, done the best job with this first assignment.”
“What did you like best?” asked Christopher.
“It was short, to the point and it was a good old fashioned horror tale. I like that about your writing.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you like mine as well?” asked Sarah Nolan.
“Yes. I just didn’t want to get fired for reading it out loud.”
“I see,” she laughed.
Sarah and Christopher were about the same age. They were both seniors and wanted desperately to be best-selling authors like the good professor. Sarah didn’t really enjoy horror and she didn’t want to write about death and violence. Her love was erotica and that was the kind of fiction she wanted to write. Dr. Wells could not help but notice her. Her beautiful skin, strawberry blonde hair and perfect figure were difficult to ignore. Perhaps her best features were her haunting and lovely deep green eyes.
“Well, I think that’s enough fun for one day, kids. See you next Friday.” Dr. Wells looked at Sarah and smiled. He could tell that Christopher wanted to hang around and bug him after class. It could be that he was sizing up Christopher just a little. Even though she didn’t like horror, Sarah was obviously deeply impressed by the natural writing talent of her instructor. W
hat was even more obvious and delightful for Dr. Wells was that he knew Sarah would sleep with him.
This was one of the great perks of being a professor at a university. When you add in that someone was a world famous writer and a widower, it was a sweet deal! This man knew how to take advantage of all of these things and make sure he slept with as many women as possible. He did. Dr. Wells was promiscuous and unethical, even for a professor at Donnis. The school was infamous for its reputation of professors taking advantage of their young female students.
“Hi, I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes,” said Christopher.
“I thought that you might,” said Dr. Wells.
“You see, I have more stories to show you. They’re all in a book. You’ll love it. There are quite a few.”
“How old are you, Christopher?” asked Dr. Wells.
“I’m almost twenty-three.”
“I see.”
“What’s your point, sir?”
“However old it is you think I am, I’m much, much older than I appear to be.”
“Okay.”
“You have your whole life ahead of you. Stop worrying; you have talent and someday I almost guarantee that you will be a published author.”
“Can I e-mail you my stories?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re perfectly welcome. Now get the hell out of here and enjoy your weekend.”
“Okay.”
Dr. Wells laughed as he watched Christopher walk away slowly towards his parking lot. Then he heard someone coming up behind him. It turned out to be the person he most wanted to see.
“Hello, professor,” said Sarah.
“Hi, Sarah,” he said.
“I was wondering if you weren’t doing anything this weekend…maybe…”
“Sarah. We’ve just had our second class and you’re asking the old man out on a date?”
“I don’t think sixty is that old?”
“Thanks.”
Sarah realized that she might have hurt his feelings but then something unexpected happened. He began to laugh out loud.
“I’m glad you don’t consider me to be that old,” he said.
“I don’t.”
“Good. Come over to my house tomorrow at eight o’clock. I’ll make us dinner unless you want to go out first.”
“No.”
“So you want me to make us some dinner?”
“Yes.”
“That would be nice.”
“Dr. Wells, we both know why I want to come spend the night with you. Dinner is not my main concern.”
“Oh?”
“You know what I want.”
“Which is?”
“To try something I’ve never done.”
“Sarah, you’re getting me excited already. What is it that you want to do?”
“Fuck a genius.”
“My address is on the back of this card.”
“Nice.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“I’m looking forward to it, Henry.”
There was no doubt about it. Sometimes being a college professor was quite a bit like being a rock star. Henry David Wells knew all about that. He looked forward to seeing what Sarah would look like naked. He had only had her in class two weeks but he lusted after her young body on a daily basis.
***
Christopher had always envisioned himself as a writer. That was the reason that he picked Donnis when selecting a school. He wasn’t Ivy League material but he wasn’t going to settle for a state school. Christopher’s thrifty parents wanted him to go to a community college for two years to save money. Perish the thought! He worked hard on his stories. Every semester some schmuck who never published a damn thing would teach the writing class he was now in. For Christopher there was only one person on the planet who could teach him to write and that was Dr. Henry David Wells. This was the man who would read his fiction and make him the next great master of the macabre.
Christopher had a feeling that Dr. Wells was interested in the same drop dead gorgeous student that he was. He would put her out of his mind for now. Christopher knew she would only lead to trouble. The road to trouble would probably be a hell of a lot of fun but the journey wasn’t worth it. He focused all his energy on becoming a writer.
***
Sarah was surprised how far out in the country her writing professor lived. She was driving for close to an hour and had gotten lost due to the heavy rain. This was Bucks County, Pennsylvania after all, and there was God’s country all over. What made her time pass wasn’t the music on the radio but the thought of Henry. She was really excited to make love with him. Sarah had slept with quite a few men and occasionally with other women. She was thinking about all the young girls who eagerly jumped into bed with the good professor. The man had no problems getting women to go to bed with him. That much she knew without a doubt. What she wanted to do was to make sure he forgot all about them. The only way Sarah knew how to do that was to indulge his every sexual fantasy. She would do that tonight. After all, they weren’t dating; they would never be dating. They would be fucking. Sarah had a firm grasp on their relationship before it even started. Sarah knew what this was going to be before she removed even one of her stockings. She called him on his cell phone.
“Hello, Henry?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Sarah.”
“Hey, where are you?”
“I think that I’m close to your home but I’m not sure.”
“Oh.”
“Is your house close to this funeral home?”
“You mean H. P. Gaines Funeral Home?”
“Yeah.”
“It is. Go about two more minutes up this driveway and you’ll be at my place. See you soon, Sarah.”
“Okay. Goodbye.”
Sarah felt uncomfortable as she drove by the funeral home during a thunderstorm. She looked up and saw a house that could more accurately be described as a mansion. It was old. She could tell by the Victorian architecture. Dr. Wells opened the front door and walked outside in the rain to greet her.
“Hello, Sarah. Glad you could make it.”
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” she said.
“Good. Please come inside.”
Sarah walked inside. She came in through the front door so quickly that she didn’t get as wet as she first thought she might. Sarah looked around at Henry’s strange living room.
“This is interesting.”
“Thank you, Sarah.”
She looked around at the large room where Henry was standing. There were several animal heads on the wall, including a deer, a bear and even a lion. She couldn’t help but notice that the professor’s fireplace was rather large and there was a walking cane next to it.
“I didn’t know you needed a walking cane,” she said.
“I used to but that was a long time ago.”
“Oh.”
“Please let me take your coat.”
“Thank you, Henry.”
“You’re welcome.” The professor smiled at Sarah and put her coat away. She turned around and saw he was standing next to a rather large-size bar. There were quite a few selections of whiskey, bourbon and scotch. Like the rest of the house, they appeared to be old.
“Would you like a drink?”
“Sure. What did you have in mind?”
“Do you like wine or spirits better?”
“Wine gets me more in the mood.”
“Well, now. Wine it shall be, Sarah!”
They both laughed at their own pretenses at where this evening was going to be leading them. Sarah and Henry knew what would be happening before too long. He showed his young student some of the selections of wine that he had available for her. She seemed surprised at the year of the bottle he selected.
“This is from the 1700’s?”
“Yes.”
“I guess you like your wine to be aged.” She said.
“Yes. Dri
nk up. You’ll enjoy it.”
“Henry, why do you have all these animal heads on the walls? Do you hunt?” Sarah realized that she may have been overstepping her bounds when she asked that. It was one thing for the two of them to want to have a consensual affair. It was another thing to ask too many probing questions to a relative stranger. What did she hope to accomplish by asking that? The man lived in an old house and was obviously much more cultured than a twenty-something, wannabe romance author.
“They came with the house.” He said.
“Oh. So you don’t hunt?”
“Dear God! No. I don’t.”
“Good.”
“Let me guess. You’re a vegetarian.”
“Vegan.”
“I see.”
“I don’t mean to be rude but I must take care of something right now, Sarah.”
“Okay.”
“Please help yourself to more wine or whatever else you want. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“No problem, Henry.”
The professor walked out of the room and disappeared into what resembled a long, dark hallway. Sarah’s curious nature was getting the best of her. Why did he live in this strange house? There was a huge fireplace. She could see the rain and lightning in the large windows surrounding this big, odd room. There were dead animal heads on the wall and he lived next to a funeral home. The only thing missing was an English butler who would begin to murder the professor’s guests one by one! Sarah was becoming quite curious about Henry’s walking cane. She walked over to it. The top of it was an eagle’s head. It appeared to be gold. Sarah started to touch the top of it. Then she discovered something. There was a secret compartment in the top of it. She removed it and found a perfectly formed, red ruby crystal. It was small but stunning. The crystal could not have been more than the size of a walnut. She couldn’t put it down. Sarah closed the top of Henry’s cane and put it back where she found it. Then she took the crystal. She was obsessed with it now. It seemed to speak to her and demanded that she hold it up in front of the fire.
