Dark Fiction

by David Kempf

  “I’m Thomas.”

  “I’m James. They call me Jim.”

  “I’m Thomas. Doubting Thomas is what they call me.”

  Jim was getting really annoyed. He wanted this stranger to leave but he also wanted to ask him for some money. It had been a long time since he’d had a bath and a decent night’s sleep.

  “Look, can I have some money?” Jim asked.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Are you going to leave me alone now?” asked Jim.

  “I doubt it.”

  “All right, buddy. Get the hell away from me!” Jim yelled.

  “No,” said Doubting Thomas.

  “What do you want?”

  Jim watched with confusion and horror as Thomas smiled and then put a skeleton mask over his head. It was like some kind of terrible hallucination but it wasn’t. It was real.

  “Memento Mori,” said Thomas.

  It didn’t take too long to choke Jim to death. He was old, drunk, and in poor health. Thomas used piano wire but he probably would have been able to complete the task with his bare hands. As far as Doubting Thomas was concerned, this was another troll, an especially filthy one that needed to be killed. The arrogance of a man to think he can get through life sponging off of others without contributing anything! He could cross someone else off his increasingly long list. His list was getting so long.

  Mary Wesley was very concerned about her assistant pastor, Father Nathan Hammett. She wanted him to continue to run her church the way Father Milo had. When he was over for coffee on Saturday, the two chatted.

  “How are you holding up, Father?” Mary asked.

  “We’re all doing the best we can under these terrible circumstances,” Father Hammett said.

  “Father, the whole parish is willing to help you get through this.”

  “Mary, don’t worry about me. I would be more concerned with Father Milo’s relatives. He came from a big family.”

  Mary laughed. It was obvious to her that the priest was happy to see her smile.

  “What’s so funny, Mary?’

  “Well, Father…it’s just.”

  “What?”

  “All Catholics come from big families.”

  The priest laughed back at her. Mary was very happy to see him smile as well.

  “Mary, that’s partially true. The ones who really practice their faith come from big families. That’s for sure.”

  “They sure do,” Mary said.

  “How are Martin and Jack doing?”

  “They’re very busy trying to solve this horrible thing.”

  The priest had a strange look on his face. Father Hammett was obviously thinking about something. It was probably a matter of life and death on his mind. Mary knew that he couldn’t help but to wonder if the killer had similar plans for him. The priest wouldn’t be human if he wasn’t thinking the same thing. The circumstances of this murder made it seem like it could have been open season on all clergy.

  “Well, I think they’re going to do it,” said Father Hammett.

  “I agree.”

  “Martin and Jack are good detectives and good men. They both have character, even though I wish Jack had faith in something besides science,” Father Hammett said.

  “He does,” said Mary.

  “Like what?”

  “Father, he has faith in his family and friends. He has faith in his wife. Jack has faith in his friends. He has faith in Martin.”

  The priest laughed at the Christian defending a good man; and he was a good man who just happened not to believe in God. Like Father Milo and Pastor Thorn, Father Hammett was old school. All three clergymen had always been very distrustful of atheists.

  “Well,” said the priest.

  “The writing on the wall was made from the man’s blood,” Martin said.

  “Martin, you startled me, I didn’t even see you come in,” the priest said.

  “The other writing wasn’t on the wall?” asked Mary.

  “No,” said Martin.

  “What was it written with?” asked Father Hammett.

  “It was written with a regular fountain pen. The killer wrote on the man’s forehead after he was strangled.”

  “What did he write on the man’s forehead?” asked Mary.

  “Memento Mori...”

  “Are you sure?” asked Father Hammett.

  “Yes. Do you know what it means, Father?”

  “I absolutely know what it means. It’s a strange expression.”

  “Well, what does it mean?” asked Martin.

  “Remember you are mortal.”

  “I wonder if he meant the expression for him or for us,” said Martin.

  “I don’t know but I think he had death or fate on his mind before he committed the murder,” said the priest.

  Father Hammett was in deep thought for a moment. It seemed likely that whoever the killer was, he or she was educated. Even if the person wasn’t formally educated, it was obviously someone with a curious intellect.

  “Memento Mori, I thought that sounded like Latin,” said Martin.

  “Indeed,” said the priest.

  “I guess it gives you and Jack a lot to think about,” said Mary.

  “Yes. This case is quite complicated,” said Martin.

  The mind of a detective always needed to be able to focus. The charisma of a good preacher could not be overstated. Whether he was crooked or honest, Rev. Thorn was very popular with his congregation.

  “Now listen here, people. You’re going to have to make a decision for Christ today,” said Rev. Thorn.

  This was the part of a nondenominational service when people who were visiting had to decide whether or not to accept the Lord. If someone already belonged to the church, chances are they had already claimed a born again conversion experience. Rev. Thorn had known for some time that he was very good at what he did. There was no doubt about it. He had a knack for convincing people that the theology he embraced was the road to the truth that would set them free. Some people were turned off by his sermons and his church. They often thought that he was….arrogant.

  “If you know the truth and have hardened your heart to the gospel, you’ve already made a choice. Remember eternity is not a long time. Eternity is forever and ever and ever. Whatever is keeping you from your choice, leave it behind. Embrace him who sacrificed himself on the cross to take your place. Jesus paid for your sins. He paid for my sins. Accept him as your personal savior and go to Heaven.”

  Rev. Thorn’s sermons were always very emotional. He closed the service with popular hymns. “Just as I Am, Without One Plea” by Charlotte Elliot was played most Sundays. Sometimes John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” was played, but not too often.

  “Thank you. It’s great to see so many coming to know the truth. One of my assistant pastors will be happy to sit with you and pray with you. Amen.”

  Thorn had quite a few converts that week. The problem was, after people were personally assured of their own salvation, many didn’t come back until Christmas or Easter. He looked all around after his service was over. The people had all left. Something was strange.

  “Who’s there?” Rev. Thorn asked.

  He saw someone’s shadow in the back pew. The pastor ran over to see who it was but all he caught was a glimpse of a shadow. Whoever it was leaving his church made little noise. The shadow itself was odd. It looked like the shadow of a child on Halloween. Thorn could tell that whoever had just left his church was wearing some kind of mask.

  “What the Devil?” he asked. He didn’t even have a chance to blink before Thomas knocked him over the head. For irony’s sake, he knocked out Thorn with a collection plate.

  Doubting Thomas was very busy. He was reading through scripture frantically and obsessively. He was looking for a way to come to understand God (if there was one). He was starting to wonder why he had all these unanswered questions.

  “There are no answers,” he said out loud.

  Why did God regularly t
alk to people in the Bible, but now he remains utterly silent! There was no evidence of his existence outside of people’s heads right now. Were all of the miracles just fables? All miracles either occurred in the past or will, supposedly, occur in the future. That way there didn’t have to be one shred of evidence for the supernatural today. Perhaps this was almost enough to drive him crazy. The worst proof was the belief that you’ll see the full evidence of God’s majesty after your death. That was too much. Doubting Thomas thought about that way too much. This gave him terrible headaches and was what had made him form his dreaded list.

  Little Thomas Grey was very young when it happened. He still couldn’t remember whether he was eleven or twelve, but he continued to prefer remembering himself as being twelve at the time. His father was very drunk and often beat his mother. The night he remembered was especially bad.

  “Your mom’s a prude,” he said.

  “What?” Thomas asked.

  “She’s no good in bed,” he said. Thomas was confused but his father looked at him with a terrible smile. He was slurring his speech and tomorrow morning he probably would not remember what he said. Still, Thomas was devastated by his father’s awful words about his mom.

  “Dad, I think you need to sleep,” said Thomas.

  “Mind you’re fucking business, boy,” his father said. “I put the damn bread on the table; you show me some respect or I’ll beat your ass!”

  “What?”

  “Come on now, boy,” he said. Then he looked at Thomas with that wicked, drunken smile again. “It’s in the bible, you know.”

  “What is, Dad?”

  “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “Where the fuck is your mother?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me give you another bible lesson, boy.” This time he looked at Thomas like he meant business. It appeared as though he meant to seriously hurt him.

  “Yes?”

  “The apostle Paul wrote a lot of great things…about women.” His dad’s face displayed a non-threatening, drunken, sarcastic smile once again. “Do you know what women are supposed to be?”

  “Faithful and loving,” little Tommy Grey said.

  “No!” His father smacked him across the face so hard he almost flew into the other side of the room. “No!” He gave him the most serous look that Thomas had ever seen. “You little faggot, they are supposed to be subservient to their men!”

  “Oh,” he said, wiping the blood from his chin.

  “That means that any way I want to have sex with my wife…is my decision. Do you know what? Your mom’s a fucking prude and I have to get my sex elsewhere.”

  Thomas understood just enough of this for it to traumatize him. He didn’t understand much about sex, having a fundamentalist mom and secretive, alcoholic father. What he did understand, what he felt, was an overwhelming sense of betrayal from his father. That much evil coming from one man made his father cease to be human to him. It made him more like a fiend, a dragon that had to be slain.

  “Where’s your prude, I mean, your pathetic mother?”

  “I don’t know, Dad.”

  Thomas’s deranged father staggered slowly to his bedroom. He walked into the room where their unloved and neglected son, Thomas, was conceived. Thomas’s father walked slowly, very slowly towards his room. He had walked, drunk, inside the room before on countless occasions. This time was different because Thomas had an overwhelming feeling that there would be consequences this time. Consequences were perhaps his least favorite word in the English language, second in disfavor only to the word no. He kept walking, slowly, very slowly towards the familiar room in which he passed out most nights of the week.

  “Enough games, where the hells are you?” he asked frantically.

  There was no reply as he looked everywhere for his wife. She was not in bed and she was not changing her clothes. Thomas’s dad realized his wife was simply nowhere to be found.

  “Where’s Mom, Dad?” Thomas asked. It didn’t take long before he wished that he never asked that question. His father picked him up by the throat and slammed him against the closet. He was not an evil man; it’s just that his lusts and alcoholism overwhelmed the best parts of who he really was.

  “Stop bothering me! I’m sick of you interrupting me, you little son of a bitch!”

  “Stop hurting me!”

  “Who do you think you are?”

  “You’re son!” Thomas screamed.

  Now Thomas’s dad was determined to get to the bottom of this. He looked all around and still saw no sign of his missing wife. Then, Thomas’s father found what he was looking for.

  “Oh God!” screamed Thomas.

  She was hanging from the top of the ceiling. Apparently, she had hung herself at some unknown point in the day. It probably happened sometime between Thomas losing himself, watching television, and his father going out to find women and get drunk.

  “She’s taken her own life!” Thomas’s father was both stunned and angry. Was he going to have to raise this pathetic child alone now? He would have no part of that. The man was much too selfish to have to deal with the loving and caring of a child. Thomas wanted no part of it either. He had no wish to be raised by a dragon.

  “Now I got to take care of you…..”

  “Not for long!” Thomas said.

  Thomas’s dad was too drunk and too devastated by his wife’s suicide to notice the look on his son’s face – a look of pure revenge. He was also too drunk to notice the knife hidden behind Thomas’s back. That was a fatal mistake. Thomas’s dad was almost too drunk to feel the pain. However, he still knew what was happening to him. He looked in utter disbelief at the blade sinking deep into his throat. That was the first dragon that Thomas ever killed.

  Now, he didn’t currently have a dragon, but he did have an ogre. They were selfish, gluttonous, greedy creatures. Rev. Thorn was a symbol of greed. Now, Doubting Thomas had him to torture for a while. He asked Rev. Thorn some unanswerable questions. Among them was asking the reverend how he can be so confident with his congregation when there is no empirical proof for God. Then Thomas knocked him out again, once again using his collection plate. Since he was a man of his word, he drove Thorn back to his home. This is what he promised if Thorn would merely answer all questions honestly.

  “If you want me to say that there’s no proof at all for faith, I agree it’s true,” said Rev. Thorn.

  “What else?”

  “Thomas, if you want me to admit I take advantage of my congregation financially, I admit, that’s also true.”

  “Good enough, Thorn. Get the fuck out of the car,” said Thomas.

  “Thank you, Thomas?”

  “I told you I always keep my word.”

  “Thank you!”

  “You understand that I’m keeping the car.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Rev. Thorn could hardly believe this odd stroke of luck. Could a psychopath really be a man of his word? He immediately opened the door and started to run for his front door.

  “I’m sorry! I must break my oath of keeping my word just this once.” Thomas took Rev. Thorn’s gun out of the glove compartment and shot him in the back with it. He wasn’t sure if it was a fatal wound but he honestly didn’t care. The important thing was to harm him in some way for being such a phony. When he decided that it was time for him to go, he began to drive Rev. Thorn’s car away. Thomas let this ogre get away.

  “Now, I must go to the dragon!”

  The local institution for higher education was Davistown Community College. It was situated in the center of town and parents got a fine deal with the cost of tuition. One of the more controversial professors was Dr. Charles Warren. He was famous for his books on evolution and Darwinism. Thomas knew that he was packing and getting ready to go on sabbatical for six months to study biology in Europe. He would not be missed soon enough for them to discover his dead body. Thomas snuck through his back
door.

  “Who are you?” Dr. Warren asked.

  “Thomas.”

  “What are you doing in my house?”

  “To slay an arrogant dragon, is why I’m here.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Dr. Warren.

  “Remember Dr. Stephanie Crane?” Thomas asked.

  “Yes. She’s been missing for a year.”

  “You should join her,” said Thomas.

  “I’m calling the…”

  “No.” Thomas put the cloth over his mouth and the good professor was instantly knocked unconscious. There was a quarry not far from Dr. Warren’s home, with a river about two hundred feet down from it; its waters wild and furious. These were the waters where another Marxist, Stephanie Crane rested in peace. She was no dragon. Stephanie Crane was a witch. In the middle ages they would either burn them or drown them. Burning people alive was a bit too sadistic, even for Thomas.

  The arrogance of atheist and Marxist was very annoying to Thomas. These were some of the most religious people in the world but they pretended they were detached and scientific. The quarry would make a fine resting place for Dr. Warren. Thomas tied two heavy anchors and copies of the professor’s books, “How Marx Changed the World” and “Indisputable Evolution” to his chest.

  “Hey, Ahh...”

  “I’m sorry Dr. Warren.”

  “What?”

  “There is a price to be paid for your arrogance.”

  He pushed the professor off the edge of the quarry into the running river. Doubting Thomas could hear the professor’s screams as he regained consciousness before he drowned. The dragon was slain.

  “Memento Mori, Dr. Warren.”

  It was hard for Jack Smith to carry the dead body of his six year old sister. The serial killer that lived in his neighborhood when he was growing up eluded all detectives and police. He appeared to be an ordinary man. The monster appeared neither to be a terrible individual nor unusually good. His plain demeanor was nothing short of a brilliant disguise. The fiend had a taste for raping and murdering young girls from the suburbs. Jack’s father died when he was very young, and he and his sister Victoria were raised by a single mother. She was a very hard working woman. Her late husband left her with virtually nothing financially with which to raise her two children.