New Fears--New horror stories by masters of the genre

by Mark Morris

  Isobel struggles, but her strength is so depleted from her long slumber that she cannot make any headway.

  “Fear not, sweet Isobel, I’ll put you back where you belong.”

  Isobel kicks him in the groin, watches with not inconsiderable delight as he doubles over, then she remembers to flee. She flings the door closed behind her, starts towards the grand staircase. She is halfway down when she hears the crash of wood against wall that says her husband is in pursuit. Her strength is fading, her speed bleeding to nothing. At the bottom of the stairs she must cross the marble floor, pass through the darkened arched doorway, and down the few worn steps into the chapel, and thence to the altar.

  What if he catches her first?

  What if he takes it in his head to strangle her then and there? For there’s no one who might look for her, no one to suspect she lives; there are no appearances to be maintained. Even if some family member of his might wander by, they’ve no cause to save her. From behind comes a growl, a roar of such surpassing anger and viciousness that she finds her feet have wings. An extra burst of speed gets her to the entrance hall, almost skidding on marble tiles as she goes. When she passes through the doorway she does not touch the steps, but rather flies several yards into the chapel, landing at the third row of pews, the impact jarring every bone in her body, so much so that she’s sure she must rattle. She stumbles her way towards the altar with its shimmer of precious plate, and splashes of colour on the bright white cloth covering where moonlight pierces the stained-glass window.

  Adolphus is enraged; he’ll not see the open tombs, the floor slid back by dint of the secret switches the dead bride told her about, a handy bit of knowledge plucked from one of the passing ghosts of the Wollstonecrafts’ castle, a stonemason who’d built the secret passages and the tombs at the request of a great-great-great Wollstonecraft grandfather whose terror was to be buried alive. But such escapes are no use to the dead, and the grandparent was indeed thoroughly deceased when put into the tomb—although his bones and those of other departed were shifted and shuffled when the present generation began their business of burying brides. The stonemason himself, another trusting fool, had been put to death as soon as the work was completed.

  This plan, fumes Isobel, was not best thought-out and she resents the dead bride for not having formulated a better strategy in all her time lying in the crypt.Then again, perhaps she never was very practical in life. Isobel, St Dymphna’s dropout though she might be, is quite certain she’d have come up with something—anything—better.

  Adolphus does not see the four figures slumped in the front pews, and Isobel runs past them, skidding to a halt before the altar. Her husband comes to a stop a foot from her, cursing and spitting and telling her precisely what he thought of her in life and death; if she had any lingering doubts about his role in her demise they are dispelled once and for all.

  “I will put you back in the ground, sweet Isobel.Although these months beneath have done you good, who’d have thought under all that fat you were so terribly lovely?”

  “Would it have stopped you from murdering me?” she asks out of sheer curiosity.

  He shakes his head, his grin a wolf ’s. “No. But I might have taken a little more fun with you. I might do so now. I have, after all, a husband’s rights.”

  “Will you exercise them on all of us?” Isobel says so quietly, so calmly that he is thrown off by her lack of fear, her lack of panic.

  “Us?” He tilts his head. “Madness, I suppose, from the darkness.”

  “Madness no doubt, but one you will share, my love. Come, greet your maidens.They wait at your back like good wives.”

  Adolphus, seemingly unwilling to take his eyes from her, turns his head only a little, but it is enough for him to see what waits in the periphery. Four of his spouses, skeletons all, released from their beds and gilded cages by Isobel, stand with effort, bones a’clacking and a’creaking, hair falling from heads to shoulders, and thence into empty rib cages. Their frocks have entirely decayed, leaving only threads and rags caught here in a joint, there on a bone, as if they might show their husband their nakedness entire, in mimicry of the wedding night he denied them.There is, however, no sign of cartilage or tendons or muscles to show how they might be held together. Sheer will and malice, imagines Isobel, and not a little magic resulting from both.

  She takes in the skulls with their hairline fractures, the stains decay has left, the wisps of hair that was once so glorious. At least one has a limp, another lacks an arm; a brigade of the halt and the lame, the obese and the damned ugly, all especially susceptible to any scrap of kindness, and unwary that their value to their husband was no greater than monetary. She wonders if the dead bride—her companion and guide—was a witch in life, undiscovered, for her powers to remain so long after death. Or perhaps she was simply a girl with hopes and dreams that curdled dark and sour and kept the strongest part of her, the bravest part, the worst part, alive.

  Adolphus has gone astonishingly pale, as if his blood has turned coward and fled. His lips move, producing only, “Whuh, whuh, whuh.”

  “‘Whuh?’ What are you trying to say, my love? What is this sorcery? None but what you created yourself by murder and deceit.”

  The brides shuffle forward, closing in on Adolphus who backs away, hands raised as if that will stop their awful progress with its accompanying symphony of clacking and rattling.

  “What I want you to know, my love, is this: tonight your house will fall. I will put every Wollstonecraft here to the sword.Then I will make it my business to hunt down every bastard, bitch and by-blow who fell from your family tree and destroy them too.Your bloodline will be wiped from the face of the earth, and I swear before you and your wives that I shall make this my life’s work.”

  The corpse brides reach towards their husband, thin fingers, bony arms, ravaged joints, and with a cry Adolphus steps backwards. He does not see the open maw behind him, so he falls, arms windmilling, then there is a silence as he drops, then the whump! and crack! as he lands, dust flying into the air.

  Isobel and her sister-spouses peer over the edge.

  Adolphus lies in the tomb Isobel so recently occupied, recumbent upon the form of the dead bride, her own cursed jewellery removed. Isobel is sure she can see some broken bones on the skeletal girl where the impact has been too much, but while Adolphus remains stunned the dead bride’s arms begin to move. They curve up and over, around her husband, before he realises what’s going on.The fingers of her right hand clench together into a spear and this she plunges into Adolphus’s chest, the flesh of which parts as if it is no more than warm butter.There is the breaking of ribs prised apart and the wet sucking sound of red muscle meat being found and enclosed by a bony cage of palm and fingers.

  “Your heart, my love,” says the dead bride, “shall ever be mine.”

  And with that there is a great sigh as from many mouths. Adolphus ceases to move, his eyes glaze over. The girl in the tomb does not answer when Isobel calls, and she can no longer sense any presence other than her own.The chorus of brides falls to the flagstones, become dust even as Isobel watches. She is meticulous, though, ensuring they will have somewhere to rest, and brushes their final remains into the crypt. It falls on Adolphus and his final bride like confetti for the dead. Isobel, feeling bereft that she cannot say goodbye to her sisters, whispers farewell and hopes they will hear it somewhere, then locates the switch to close the lid of the tomb, and then the second one that puts the floor back in place.When she is done it looks as if nothing ever happened here.

  Isobel rises. There are weapons to be had in the house, sabres and stilettos that hang on walls for display, but will be just as fine used for their true purpose. She will spill all the blood to be found, she will put them to the sword and then set fire to the hangings in the bedrooms, the parlours, the grand hall. She will burn the place utterly to the ground.

  No full graduate of St Dymphna’s could do better, she is certain. She’ll not retu
rn to the Misses Meyrick, though she might write to them from time to time as she crosses another Wollstonecraft off her list. Isobel will not hunt Hepsibah Ballantyne, for she was merely doing her job, and the poison used on Isobel was not intended for her. Oh, she’ll find the coffin-maker, employ her for her own ends—it’s a fool who wastes a good poisons woman—but first of all she’ll put a good scare into Hepsibah Ballantyne just for fun. She might even keep the gems on her canines long enough to give Ballantyne a glittering, terrifying smile.

  Isobel takes one last look at the chapel, finds she cannot distinguish the joins where the floor might open up again if she were to press the right parts of the frieze carved into the altar.And she understands, then, the only thing that will truly haunt her as she goes upon her way: that she did not ask the dead bride, the one who came before her, for her name.

  THE FAMILY CAR

  by Brady Golden

  Lindsay spots the car in her rear-view mirror. It’s coated in a glaze of dirt. Spatters of a translucent crust have hardened on the windshield, and patches of rust spot the paint like lesions. There’s no shortage of station wagons in the world, many of them white. Other than its filthy state, this one looks about the same as the rest. But it’s theirs. She can’t account for her certainty, but she is certain. It’s her parents’ car. She rode in it a thousand times, learned to drive behind the wheel. What she’s seeing is impossible. Even as she feels her muscles tightening, she tells herself that. Impossible. Her family is gone, their car with them. To convince herself, to wrest control of her own body before panic overwhelms her, she adjusts her mirror to get a look at the license plate.

  She hasn’t seen the number in eight years, wasn’t sure she even knew it anymore, but there it is.

  It’s dusk. The sunset’s glare hits the roofs of the two lanes of cars stopped at the intersection, waiting for the light. She’s second in line behind a silver minivan. For less than a second, she lets herself think the driver might be her dad, but it’s not. Through the thick gunk on the windshield, she can’t make out much—a dark lump and a pair of gloved hands hooked around the wheel—but she can tell it’s not him. He wasn’t a small man by any stretch, but this driver is huge. In order to fit into the car, he has to hunch into a question-mark shape.Who, then?

  The light changes. When the minivan starts forward, she hesitates. A car further back in line—not the station wagon, not the mystery driver—lets out a blast of its horn. She drives.

  Lindsay’s last memory of the station wagon—of its square back shrinking towards the end of Euclid Street—is an invention. Her imagination conjured it up to provide a visual representation of her family’s disappearance. She didn’t watch them leave that day. She was still in bed, eyes slitted, counting the beats of her headache so she wouldn’t think about how badly she needed to throw up.

  She was sixteen when it happened. Since then, there’s been a secret theory she’s been unable to shake, no matter how absurd it is—the night before, she had managed to piss her parents off so fully, to disappoint them to such an absolute degree, that when they climbed into their car that morning, they decided, fuck it, let’s just leave this one behind and start fresh somewhere else. Anyone who had seen the look on her dad’s face when he’d come into her room would have to admit the idea wasn’t as crazy as it sounded.They were supposed to be attending a birthday breakfast for Lindsay’s grandmother—her dad’s mom—but owing to her antics the night before, Lindsay was disinvited. Those antics had included a bottle of strawberry Boone’s Farm, the pickup truck of a boy four years her senior, and a collision with a traffic light downtown. The last thing her dad said to her, once he’d let her know they were leaving without her, was,“You just do the dumbest things, over and over again.”

  They never made it to breakfast.As far as the police could tell, they never made it anywhere. Something happened to the King family in the two-mile stretch of residential streets between their home and their destination.Whatever it was, it happened to the family car as well. Neither they nor it were ever seen again. Until, that is, today.

  As she drives, Lindsay’s eyes keep drifting to her mirror. The station wagon is right behind her, close enough that if she checked her brakes, it would plow straight into her bumper. Does the driver know who she is? Does he want her to notice him? Christ, is he following her? They cruise down one long block after another, past shopping centers and gas stations. The streets are crowded with rush-hour traffic, but it feels like they’re the only two cars out there. A knitting needle of pain sings in her chest, and she realizes she’s been holding her breath.

  Her purse rests on the passenger seat. She reaches inside and digs out her phone. Fingers shaking, she misdials twice before the call goes through.The 911 operator picks up.The voice is fuzzy and distant. Lindsay can’t make out the initial greeting. She starts talking anyway.

  “My name is Lindsay King. I’m driving east on Grand. There’s a car following me. It’s a white station wagon.We’re just past—”

  She looks up for a street sign, only to discover that she has rolled through a red light into an intersection. Her passenger- side window goes dark as another car fills it.The phone slips from her fingers. She jerks the steering wheel and stomps on the brake, but it’s too late.There’s a sharp squeal, cut off by a tremendous metallic bang. Glass explodes all around her.The impact flings her against her door, and the left side of her body lights up. Her car spins sideways, then stops. Outside, people are yelling, but their voices sound muffled. Something tickles her cheek. She touches it, and her hand comes away sporting a bright red smear.The blood keeps coming. It runs down her face and pools in the folds of her shirt.

  * * *

  Her grandmother meets her at the hospital. She sits with Lindsay while a doctor sews her forehead shut, then drives her back to her place. Lindsay’s grandfather died three years ago.After that, Denise sold the house where she’d raised her son, then, for three years, her granddaughter, and moved into a trailer park. Now she lives in a narrow box with shingled walls and planters thick with wildflowers mounted in every window.

  The police officer who comes to see them isn’t the same one who worked the case when Lindsay was a teenager. It was dumb of her to have expected it to be. The world changes in eight years.

  Lindsay and Denise position themselves on the couch. While Lindsay talks, the police officer takes occasional notes in a pocket-sized spiral-bound notebook. He has the round button-eyes of a rag doll. Denise places her hand on top of Lindsay’s. Her palms are dry and soft like dough. Lindsay narrates up to the moment after the accident when she stepped out of her car and discovered that the station wagon was gone. He leaves room for several beats of silence before he speaks.

  “What made you sure it was your parents’ car, not just one that looked like it?”

  I just knew, she almost says.“I saw the license plate.”

  Nodding, he flips back a few pages in the notebook. “What’s that number again?”

  He has it written down right there. He’s quizzing her like a game show host. She should know the answer, did know it only a couple of hours ago. It’s gone now.

  “I can’t remember,” she says.

  His shiny doll eyes never seem to blink. He asks,“Are you taking any medications these days?”

  “Lexapro. Ativan.”

  “That’s for anxiety?”

  “And depression,” she says.

  “Are you currently undergoing any sort of treatment?”

  “I’m not in therapy, no. Not right now.”

  Denise squeezes her hand. In that gesture, she gives away something that she would never say out loud—she doesn’t believe Lindsay either. Not really. This car accident is the latest in an eight-year series of manifestations of her granddaughter’s inability to move on. Lindsay doesn’t blame her for coming to this conclusion, any more than she blames the police officer. Her only anger is with herself for not figuring out the same thing sooner.

  She wasn
’t the only one to lose people that day. Denise lost her only son, and she found a way to keep going. How deep a reservoir of strength must that have taken? She kept it together, took in Lindsay, cared for her husband while he died slowly for two years, is keeping it together right now. Meanwhile, even with the pills that are supposed to make her mind run smoothly, Lindsay’s seeing ghosts and driving into oncoming traffic.

  After the police officer leaves, Denise makes tea.They sit on opposite ends of the couch. Steam ribbons upwards from their cups. For a while, neither of them speaks. The trailer’s electrical systems hum faintly.

  Lindsay says,“I need to leave.”

  “I can give you a lift,” Denise says. “But you’re welcome to stay the night if you want.You’re always welcome.”

  “Thanks. No. I mean, I need to leave here. Town. I need to get better. I don’t think I can do it here.”

  It’s hard not to look away as she says it. Lindsay is the last of Denise’s family, and she’s abandoning her. Once she goes, her grandmother will be alone. It feels like a betrayal, so Denise’s response comes as a surprise. A grin breaks out on her face. Her eyes well up with tears that couldn’t be mistaken for anything but joyful. It takes Lindsay a moment to realize that Denise has been waiting years for her to say these exact words.

  * * *

  When the phone call comes, she’s in her kitchen, watching a street-cleaning truck’s lights blink a slow rhythm in the alley beneath her window. Brown snow stands in piles in the gutter. It’s barely nine o’clock, but Paul’s workday starts before dawn, and he’s already sacked out in the next room, so Lindsay is sequestered in here. It’s where she spends most of her nights.

  It’s been three years since she moved here, to a city halfway across the country. She hasn’t been back. She still talks to her grandmother twice a week.Those phone calls are everything she needs and all she can handle. In six weeks, she and Paul are flying to Hawaii to get married. Lindsay’s looking forward to a lot of things about her wedding, but near the top of the list is getting to see Denise again. Her grandmother will be the one to walk her down the aisle.