Behind Dark Doors (the complete collection): Eighteen suspenseful short stories

by Susan May

  They never released those they’d captured. They were kept until they died, enduring experiments and tests, as if they were not sentient life, but were instead animals, their sole purpose to serve as a curiosity.

  Their race and his were so alike they could have a shared evolution, albeit on different planets, but culture separated them. Cruelty and violence, embedded in this alien race’s DNA, always surfaced when fear of the unknown provoked them. Compassion was what set them apart. John’s people would never steal them from their loved ones and claim it was for mutual benefit.

  “We have your computer data,” the voice said. “What were you using it for?”

  John ignored them, his mind wandering back to Crystal, back to the life from which he’d been torn, and to which he would never be returned.

  He could blame the rain for his capture; blame his preoccupation with getting back to Crystal—but he’d known this day would inevitably come. In his mind’s eye he saw his wife’s beautiful face when, only a few hours before, he’d turned from her into the night.

  “Hurry back,” she’d said.

  They won’t let me back, my love.

  Regret pierced his heart. She would never know what had happened, and he knew she would suffer even more because of it.

  He could have saved her from that pain and cruelty if he’d only shared his secret. He was too afraid he’d lose her.

  He’d tried once. ‘They come during atmospheric disturbances,” he’d told her. She’d laughed and said, “You scientists with your big words. Why don’t you just say a storm?”

  The way she’d smiled and laughed at him had almost broken his heart; he couldn’t do it, couldn’t destroy her happiness. He’d hoped the one sentence would be enough, if she would only remember it: They come during storms.

  The disembodied voice invaded his thoughts. He detected a note of frustration, perhaps at his refusal to answer its questions. The voice began to repeat the same question, as if it were running a broken, computerized loop.

  Already he was weary of them and their pointless questions. These beings comprehended so little. They were unable to even imagine what he knew; therefore, they would never ask the right questions. No matter how many of his race they took, they could never comprehend the truth, even though it was staring them in the face.

  Instead of asking about his planet, humanity should be asking about their own world. How long could they treat Earth as if it were their slave? Their true fight was with themselves and the harm they had inflicted on themselves. It wasn’t with him or his fellow colonizers. Even though it was increasingly obvious Earth was now rebelling against their control, they still continued on, ignorantly confident in their superiority to govern that which was beyond their limited resources or comprehension to control.

  His people were not warriors or invaders, as Earth’s occupants feared. The humans’ blind belief war could be their only mission was based more on their own history than on his world’s.

  Put simply, his people were scavengers of abandoned worlds, so often destroyed by technology and disregard. It was surprising how many civilizations misunderstood the precarious symbiotic relationship they shared with nature. So many different worlds they’d taken, but always it was a version of the same story.

  His early reconnaissance party had simply come to wait, scattered across the globe, analyzing and sharing their data. If these humans had listened to their world, they might have foreseen their time left was growing short, their world failing and dying. Soon even the rain would stop. His people’s wait was almost over. After the rain, their turn would come.

  © 2011 Susan May

  From the Imagination Vault

  A reoccurring question directed at a writer is: do you get your ideas from dreams? Wouldn’t that be wonderful! Sadly, it happens rarely.

  One night I did awaken from a very vivid dream. Years later, I still remember it. In the dream, I’d left a theater and lost my husband in the rain, just like Crystal. When I went searching for him, I came across a crowd of people in a parking lot who informed me we were in the middle of an alien invasion. My immediate thought was I needed to find him before the aliens took him. If they hadn’t already. I never did find him in the dream, and when I awoke, a feeling of intense loss gripped me.

  What stuck with me was the dream’s mood. It felt dark, foreboding, and claustrophobic. This mood is what I wanted to capture with Gone. As I set about writing the story, I knew I wanted it to be about alien abduction but, also, about secrets. How they harm you and the price we pay to keep them. I never imagined in the end, John was the alien. That came as a wonderful surprise even to me, after he was captured and interrogated.

  When I was younger, alien abductions fascinated me, and I read many books on the subject. For the longest time, I believed the claims of author Whitley Strieber, who said he’d been the victim of multiple alien abductions. He wrote many books on the subject.

  Now I’m older, I’m no longer a great believer. Between running a busy household and fitting in my writing, I haven’t the time to worry about aliens invading or abducting us.

  Except, on the occasional stormy night since my dream, I do wonder if behind the lightning and wild wind there could possibly some alien creature watching and waiting. After all, Earth is a beautiful planet, who wouldn’t want to live here?

  Ring Ring

  Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, is desperate. It’s January 13, 1887, and today is the day the patent for the telegraphic transmitter will be granted. Bell is racked with guilt. If not for a mysterious phone call from more than a hundred years in the future, he would have nothing to patent. Instead, Elisha Gray’s name would have gone down in history. Where did the mysterious phone call originate? Can Bell live with the choice he makes? Take a trip through a time-twisted history

  Three days it had been since Alexander Graham Bell’s fateful discovery, and he had not slept.

  If you called dozing sitting upright, sleeping, then perhaps he had captured twenty winks. There had been much to do in preparation for February fourteenth. He worked feverishly, despite the knowledge it may all be for naught, for he was following directions on faith alone.

  He had proceeded literarily blind, for the only incitement to continue on this path was a voice, a very distant voice. In fact, if he could believe his ears and, eventually, he concluded he must, then the voice was nearly more than a century away.

  How he made this extraordinary leap was something of the chicken and egg conundrum, a deep and confusing thought, which had only added to his insomnia. He was a man of science and this thing, this departure from all rationality must be either of the devil or of God. A Christian man, he chose God as the name for his mentor. The alternative was a path down which he dared not venture.

  It was this firm rationale, which he held about himself like a cloak on a wild winter’s night. This rugged belief did indeed cause him to stand over his Patents attorney, commanding in a voice he did not recognize as his own. He was normally a gentle, patient individual; his life dedicated to the advancement in language of those poor, wretched souls denied the most unappreciated of the five senses—the ability to hear.

  Yet, in these last three days he’d become a man he did not know or wish to know.

  Shoulders hunched, the weight of his decision weighing him even more than his exhaustion, he looked toward the ornate wall clock. It appeared the size of a fob watch, dwarfed by the two story cavernous room bounded by its white, carved wooden balconies. Rounded gas globes hung by long cables from the ceiling, casting a yellow-orange glow, which filled the room with a murky mood, mirroring his own disposition.

  It was the most disheartening feeling.

  To stand there, powerless, watching history being made, knowing if not for devious time it could have been his name attached to this extraordinary event. Instead, he would be the other inventor to whom Fate dealt only a forgotten second place.

  Where was his attorney?


  Shivering, he rewrapped his scarf while wondering at the wisdom of architecturally magnificent rooms, which were impossible to heat. It was more the tense excitement imbuing him than the brittle February air. His right foot tapped out the seconds with almost a mind all its own. As the clock ticked impassively into the second hour of his wait, he suddenly saw it was over.

  Beads of sweat instantly peppered his forehead, despite the cool air. He swiped them away. A woman standing nearby stared at him as he grunted in despair.

  There was Elisha Gray’s patent attorney, Marcellus Bailey, whom he recognized from a Boston Standard article. Bailey hurried past him to the patents counter. So intent was he on his purpose, he spared not a single glance around the room.

  Bell knew in the next few minutes Bailey would lodge Gray’s caveat patent, beating him to what he believed would be the most valuable patent of the nineteenth century, Transmitting Vocal Sounds Telegraphically.

  Bell watched, his stomach churning as Bailey made his way to the exit, holding in his hand the paper, which would assure Gray’s claim. Irony played its jestful hand as Bell’s attorney William Baldwin entered the building, seconds later. Brushing snow from his jacket, Baldwin paused at the door, before hurrying toward him, a conciliatory half smile squared upon his face.

  “My apologies for my tardiness, Mr. Bell,” he said, holding out his hand to shake Bell’s. “The rewrites you requested created a slight hold up with the paperwork for your patent application. Then, upon my imminent departure, I was required to deal with an issue involving another client.”

  Bell’s displeasure obviously evident from his lack of response to the attorney’s proffered hand caused Baldwin to slowly lower his unshaken hand. Immediately, he undid the leather satchel he clutched. He continued with his apologies until silenced by Bell’s upraised palm.

  “Mr. Baldwin, I’m afraid I cannot accept your apologies, for if I were to accept them it would require I become an accomplice to your failure. I have not worked for these past years to be pipped at the post, as they say, because you had an issue with one of your clients.” Bell’s crisp enunciation was as sharp as his words.

  Baldwin’s mouth opened and closed silently as he seemed to search for the appropriate response to his unhappy client.

  Bell continued. “Moments ago, Gray’s attorney lodged his patent ahead of us. You must lodge my patent and somehow find a way to ensure it becomes the primary patent for the telegraphic transmitter.”

  He stared at his attorney, his mouth pursed like a petulant child.

  Baldwin’s gaze broke from Bell’s locked stare to turn slowly toward the counter. A vest-clad clerk in a crisp, white shirt stood dutifully behind there checking, it seemed, over the paperwork, which Marcellus Bailey had just filed.

  He tilted his head a moment, then swung back to face Bell, eyebrows raised.

  “Tell me, sir, has that clerk moved from behind the counter since Gray’s caveat was filed?”

  Bell shook his head. At this, a smile spread across the attorney’s face. Bell was bewildered. What did the man have to be so happy about?

  “Well then, trouble yourself no more, sir. Yours will be the first patent examined. The early bird does not always capture the worm.”

  Standing behind his attorney at the counter, eavesdropping on the man’s insistent requests to the file clerk, Bell considered if he lost the patent, perhaps it was for the best. He’d wrestled throughout the previous day with a most difficult decision. Once made, he began this journey to steal Gray’s crown. Guilt trickled into his heart but immediately evaporated as Baldwin turned to him, grinning.

  “Mr. Bell. We are in.”

  Bell felt certain Baldwin had used currency to oil the young man’s fervor. In the end, the clerk raced the patent to the Chief Examiner while the pair waited. No matter that Gray had succeeded with his design and filing, history would show his patent as lodged hours before Gray’s.

  Over the next eighteen years, his attorney’s fancy footwork would be argued in many legendary legal cases. If only Gray’s attorney had known his secret. His duplicity began well before the visit to the Patents Office.

  Of course, even if he shared his secret, nobody would believe it was a tentative phone call, which led he, Alexander Graham Bell, to win his place in history? This unfathomable phone call made weeks before the first working telephone was to be his secret alone.

  Innocently it began with a package at his door. The same inquisitiveness, which fueled his odyssey in language, also caused him to accept the peculiar apparatus arrived that day, unchallenged. Of course, the moment he beheld the black-gray metal conglomeration of wires, he knew its purpose.

  A note from an anonymous admirer accompanied the object, detailing it as a Meucci prototype found amid trash cleared from a disused laboratory of the American District Telegraph. As time passed, Bell convinced himself if his other rival, Meucci the Italian inventor, had cared about his work he would indeed take more care of his prototypes.

  Bell had heard Meucci’s designs were rudimentary at best, so this piece was fascinating for its complexity. It consisted of a one-foot square metal box with a lid, from which two wires snaked to wooden paddles shaped into fist-sized bells. This was not the extraordinary part, as it resembled his prototype.

  The contents inside was what puzzled him. Nestled inside center, between six large electro-magnetic batteries, was a glowing, white disc. His hand felt drawn to the sphere, but upon reaching in, he received a mild shock. Rubbing at his tingling hand, he realized a sticky, pink material was now smeared upon his reddening fingers.

  Bell spent several days experimenting with the effects of the disc, placing objects and chemical substances near and upon it, but he could not fathom its compound or its application in the instrument. After a small, blinding flash occurred upon moving a crystal paperweight near it, he abandoned further experiments for fear of a possible explosion.

  On the side of the box was attached a handle. Winding this handle increased the disc’s glow and caused it to vibrate like jelly. The action, though, did nothing else, no matter how hard he wound. Bell was, also, uncertain how the operation of the handle could contribute to voice transmission. Of course, without a receiving instrument he was unable to truly test the machine.

  Had it not been for a fateful accident, he would have abandoned the instrument as another telegraphic voice prototype failure. The perpetrator of fate was, curiously, his maid, Mrs. Pidco. So suffused in his own contemplation of the contraption, Bell neglected to dictate she avoid the machine.

  Early one morning, she was furiously dusting around the instrument. Before he had time to command her to stop, she’d moved the handle forward then back, feather duster dancing around the machine. A high-pitched shrill tone, clear and long, like a pressed piano key, suddenly sounded from one of the bell paddles.

  Mrs. Pidco’s hand flew to her mouth. She gasped, “Oh, my goodness, dearie me.”

  Bell was beside her in an instant, grabbing her hand to lead her away, lest she do more damage.

  “Mrs. Pidco, I think perhaps you are done with dusting here. This equipment is delicate. If you could continue upstairs, please.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bell. Sorry, Mr. Bell.” She turned and rushed up the stairs, while the strange sound continued to chime behind her.

  Phrrrrp-bthrrr. Pthrrrr-pthrrr. It sounded like a cat’s interrupted purr. Abruptly it stopped.

  Now alone, Bell picked up one of the paddles. He noticed the disc now glowed far brighter than ever before. His mistake, he realized, had been to presume the handle was like other electromagnetic devices, whereby one simply wound to create the electrical charge in the coils. This handle was more like a switch. Placed in the correct position, it must somehow conduct power from the disc to the batteries and then to the mix of wires.

  Bending over the box, Bell tentatively pulled the handle back. Then pushed it forward again. Slowly, he drew the paddle to his ear as though the thing was alive and might do something
surprising. The purring tone emitted from the earpiece, now louder in his ear. There was definitely a rhythm to it.

  A long tone. A break. Long tone, again. A break, again.

  Suddenly, it stopped. A still silence settled over the room.

  Bell peered into the box. The orb still glowed brightly. He was about to pull the handle back again, when he heard a small voice in his ear.

  “Hello?”

  His heart jolted as though electricity had travelled through the wires and into his body. He dropped the earpiece. It fell from his hand, but was caught by its cord. Pendulum-like, it swung beneath the table, banging against a wooden leg.

  Swiveling about in a frantic circle, Bell searched the room looking for the owner of the voice.

  He was alone.

  What manner of trickery was this?

  Perhaps this was a safeguard effected by Meucci to scare off anyone using the machine without his permission.

  As he stared at the swinging bell, it came again.

  “Hello? Hello? Who’s there?”

  The distinctly male voice came from the dangling paddle.

  Scooping the paddle up, he pressed it firmly against his ear. He then picked up the second paddle attached to the machine and held it to his mouth. His hands trembled, forcing him to hold the ear paddle slightly away from his head.

  The voice continued: “Anyone there?”

  A crackling like the sound of scrunching paper accompanied the words. It sounded distant, too, as though the person was many miles away.

  Clearing his throat, Bell prepared to speak. He needed a moment to calm himself. For if there was ever a time to bring all his assurance to bear, it was now. Meucci had clearly done it. This apparatus somehow had carried a human voice across a distance. He was about to speak telegraphically. It seemed wondrous and frightening, all at once.