A Dark Collection: 12 Scary Stories

by Lukens, Mark

  “Come on,” Cheryl said to Nick. “I need some water.” Nick and Cheryl started walking towards the motel, and Austin was about to fall in beside them, but he turned back around and saw that Hannah hadn’t moved yet.

  Hannah turned and Gail was right beside her, locking eyes with her.

  “I know what you can do,” Gail whispered to her. “You can do so much more than you realize. You can help yourself, your friends, and you can help all of us.”

  Austin hurried back and pulled Hannah away from Gail. “Stay away from her, you crazy bitch.”

  • • •

  They waited in motel room six. Nick refused to eat any of the food or drink any of the water that Gail had left for them.

  “It’s probably poisoned,” Nick told them. “You eat that shit, and the next thing you know, you’re waking up strapped down to a table so someone can carve you open.”

  Hannah picked up the gallon of water and drank down a few long swallows, and then she stared at Nick. “It’s fine. Trust me.” She handed the bottle to Cheryl who drank some of it down.

  “Fine, you guys go ahead,” Nick said. “But I think I’ll wait for a while.”

  After they drank more water and nibbled at the bread and dried meat, Hannah sat on the end of the lumpy bed with Austin right beside her. She wished she could have convinced them to leave earlier when they’d had the chance, but it was too late now. They were trapped here, she was sure of that.

  And now she couldn’t get Gail’s words out of her mind. How could she help them? What was she supposed to do?

  Cheryl sat on the other bed, her back against the headboard. The room was growing murky as the sun set. They left the door wide open and the drapes open to allow some of the fading light into the room. At least the air was beginning to cool down a little.

  “This is all my fault,” Cheryl said miserably. “If I hadn’t wanted to find that stupid meteor crater …”

  Nick glanced at Cheryl, but he didn’t comfort her. Maybe he thought it was her fault, too. He continued pacing back and forth.

  Austin was about to say something, but they all froze when they heard the tolling of the bells from the church.

  They ran out of the motel and around the corner. They saw the church up on the hill lit up with what looked like torches in the front of it. There were many people gathered in front of the church already—more people than Hannah thought lived in this little town.

  “I guess that’s our call,” Nick said.

  They hurried past the houses, and they saw more people coming out of their homes quickly. The people were all different ages, men and women and even a few children, and all of them wore scraggly clothes that hung loosely on their undernourished bodies. Some of the people limped; some had make-shift bandages on their arms and legs. They saw the woman with the bandage wrapped around her head, covering one side of her face. All of the people looked sickly and weak, but they all hurried to the church at the sound of the bell.

  When they were only a hundred feet away from the church, they saw that people had gathered in a semi-circle in front of the church, but none of them were entering the building. On the doorstep of the church was a collection of items from their van laid out like offerings.

  Nick forced his way through the people as he saw his duffel bag of clothes, their cooler of food and water, his wallet. “Hey! That’s my stuff!”

  Two men stepped in front of the collection of items, both of them holding shotguns. They pumped the shotguns and aimed them at Nick.

  Nick stopped in his tracks, his hands up in surrender. “Hey, what the hell? That’s our stuff on the ground.”

  “It’s the Pastor’s now,” a man said from the crowd behind Nick.

  Nick turned and saw Hannah, Austin, and Cheryl waiting with the group of people. A man in his forties with thinning hair stepped out of the crowd and looked at Nick. He seemed nervous and his clothes were soaked with sweat under his arms and around his neck. “Your possessions are the Pastor’s possessions now. And then they will be shared by everyone. What’s ours is yours, and what’s yours is ours. We’re all brothers and sisters here.”

  The man smiled, but it looked forced, and his lips trembled slightly.

  The crowd applauded and murmured welcomes to them.

  Nick shook his head. “No, there’s some kind of misunderstanding here. We’re not members of your … your little group here. We were passing through and needed some directions.”

  “You were brought here,” the balding man said with a nervous smile, his voice loud but tremulous. “He has said so.”

  “No, we weren’t. We got lost. We want to leave but you guys stole our fucking van.” He looked back at the two men with the shotguns.

  “You can’t leave, my brother,” one of the men with the shotguns said.

  Nick tried to control his growing rage. “Listen to me, I want my van back. I want the plug wires back in my van. I want our stuff back. You can’t just steal our stuff.” He glanced around at the others. “Whoever stole my van and wires, I want them back. I won’t tell the police anything about your little cult here, but I want our stuff back.”

  There was a loud clicking noise coming from the red doors of the church, like the doors were being unlocked.

  A hush fell over the crowd.

  Cheryl grabbed Nick’s arm and pulled him back to her and huddled next to him.

  The two men with the shotguns fell back as the double doors of the church opened and the Pastor stepped out. He was a small, thin man dressed in a white suit. His skin was almost as pale as his suit, and his wispy white hair hung down to his shoulders. He looked to be in his fifties or early sixties, possibly old and frail, but he seemed to exude a sense of power. He took a few steps away from the open doors behind him that revealed nothing but darkness beyond.

  The Pastor stared at his congregation with eyes that were so light they almost looked translucent.

  Hannah felt a wave of evil radiate from this man. This man was pure evil in human form. She could feel his power, like the crackling of live electricity in her mind.

  The pale man’s eyes roamed slowly across the crowd, starting with the one closest to his right and going around the semi-circle slowly like he was studying each face, almost like he was reading each one of them.

  That’s because he is, Hannah thought.

  His eyes wandered from person to person, until they rested on Hannah, Austin, Cheryl, and Nick. He stared at them with light blue eyes that betrayed no emotion, his face as impassive as stone.

  “Welcome, my brothers and sisters,” he said in a low voice, yet it seemed to boom in Hannah’s ears and echo in her mind.

  Even Nick was taken aback by the man’s visage; maybe he felt more than saw something terrifying.

  Hannah watched the fingers of the Pastor’s left hand down by his side as they moved rapidly, like he was communicating some rapid sign language without being aware of it.

  “Sir,” Austin said before Hannah could grab onto him and warn him not to speak out. “We didn’t come here to join your…” he thought of the right word “…your community. We got lost in the desert and just needed some directions to get back to the county road.”

  The Pastor studied Austin for a moment. “You were called here. We were all called here.”

  “We’re not staying!” Nick yelled at the Pastor.

  Cheryl tried to hold onto Nick, but he pulled his arm out of her clawing hands as he stepped towards the Pastor.

  The crowd held their breath and backed up a little as Nick stood alone in the middle of the crowd, only the scattering of their possessions, the two men with shotguns and the Pastor in front of him.

  “You can’t keep us here! We want our stuff back right now. We want our van back!”

  The Pastor stood motionless as he stared at Nick, motionless except for the ceaseless movements of the fingers of his left hand, and then he cocked his head a little like he was thinking hard about something, concentrating on something.r />
  Nick seemed like he was about to say something else, like he was about to take a step forward, but he stopped and his body trembled like he was trying to move but he couldn’t.

  “Nick …” Cheryl said.

  Nick brought his forearm up to his face. He seemed like he was trying to fight against it, but it was like he was moving even though he didn’t want to. His head shook from the effort and his eyes were wide with tears flowing out of them. He opened his mouth wide and bit down into his own flesh, biting hard, clean through as blood squirted out and dribbled down his arm, dripping down onto the cracked concrete pad in front of the church. He screamed and moaned as he tore a chunk of his flesh away with his teeth and chewed on it like a tough piece of gristle.

  “Nick!!” Cheryl screamed and ran for him, but Austin and Hannah grabbed her and held her back. She struggled, but she couldn’t break free from them. “Stop it, Nick!!”

  “I can’t!!” Nick sobbed as he chewed and chewed and then swallowed the lump of flesh in his mouth. “I can’t stop myself,” he cried.

  Nick bit down on his pinky finger, and crunched into one of the joints. He shook his head back and forth like a pit bull as he tried to bite the finger off, but he couldn’t. Instead, he pulled his head back and stripped the skin and flesh off of the bone. He chewed as more blood dribbled out of his mouth, staining the front of his shirt.

  The members of the congregation watched in horror, but it was something they’d all seen before—many times.

  “STOP!!” Hannah screamed at the Pastor with more strength than she knew she had. “He’s had enough!”

  The Pastor turned his attention to Hannah like it was the first time he’d really looked at her. He studied her for a long moment as Nick swallowed the rest of the skin and flesh in his mouth, crying and cradling his arm in his other hand.

  The Pastor nodded and Nick collapsed to the ground, still sobbing uncontrollably.

  “I have been lenient,” the Pastor finally said.

  There were murmurs of praise from the crowd, all of them nodding in agreement.

  “I could have made you keep going,” the Pastor said as he turned his attention back to Nick. “I could have made you eat your whole arm, and then I could’ve made you start eating the other one.”

  Nick nodded like he understood; his eyes were still down at the ground, his moaning a little quieter now.

  The Pastor stepped away from the doors and nodded at a few of the men and women in the congregation. They hurried forward and carried the possessions from the van into the darkness of the church and then rushed back outside.

  The Pastor studied the crowd again until his light blue eyes rested on one of the members.

  “Gail,” the Pastor said. “Please step forward.”

  Gail hesitated for a moment, swallowing hard, her eyes dinner plates of fear. She took a few steps forward.

  “I would like to see you inside the church,” the Pastor said in a low voice, almost a whisper. He looked at the rest of the congregation. “All of you may go.”

  Cheryl rushed to Nick and helped him up to his feet, her arm around his shoulders as she helped him walk back towards the motel.

  Austin touched Hannah’s arm gently. “We should go,” he told her.

  Hannah couldn’t take her eyes off of the Pastor as he led the frightened old woman inside the darkness of the church.

  • • •

  An hour later they were still in motel room six, all of them wanting to be in the same room, all of them wanting to be together. Gail had left some candles in the room for them and they lit a few of them. They had the door and window shut and locked against the night.

  Cheryl had done her best to clean Nick’s wounds. She and Austin had torn parts of their shirts away and wrapped them around his wounds and wiped the blood from his face and neck. He sobbed quietly for a while, and then he just moaned.

  “We have to do whatever he wants,” Nick said in a low voice as he held his injured arm to his chest. “He can do anything he wants to.”

  “We need to leave,” Hannah said. “I told you there was something bad here.”

  “We can’t leave!” Nick said and turned to Hannah. “I … I couldn’t stop myself.” He hesitated like he didn’t want to relive the horror from only an hour ago. “I tried with everything I had … but I couldn’t stop myself from biting … from eating …”

  Nick turned away again.

  They were all quiet for a moment. The only noise was the breeze outside.

  But then there was a louder noise, like something clawing at their window.

  Austin stood up and stared at the window.

  “What is it?” Cheryl whispered, standing beside Nick. Nick still sat on the bed cross-legged, still in shock.

  “Someone’s out there,” Austin said in a low voice.

  Then they heard the noise at the door, like someone was clawing at it, trying to knock maybe.

  Hannah hurried to the door and unlocked it.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Austin said.

  “It’s Gail,” Hannah said before she even opened the door.

  She opened the door and the old woman practically fell inside the room.

  Cheryl jumped back and stifled a scream with her hands.

  Austin stared in horror at what had happened to Gail, he was frozen to the spot on the floor as he watched Hannah help the old woman to the closest bed.

  “Sit down here,” Hannah whispered at Gail.

  Gail felt the bed with trembling fingers before she sat down because she no longer had any eyes. Her eyes had been torn from her face, and judging from the blood and gore underneath the old woman’s fingernails, she had done it herself.

  No one needed to say anything—they all knew she had been punished by the Pastor.

  “I needed to come find you,” Gail said to Hannah as she reached out to touch her arm with her blood-stained fingers.

  Hannah didn’t shrink back.

  “She was punished,” Nick said. “She did something wrong and she was punished. Don’t talk to her.”

  Hannah ignored him. She stared at Gail.

  “He’s going to kill you,” Gail told Hannah. “He can see what you are. He can sense your power and the threat that you are to him.”

  “What the hell’s she talking about?” Austin said.

  “Hannah’s psychic abilities,” Cheryl whispered with the first trace of hope in her voice.

  Hannah shook her head no. “I … I don’t have any power. Nothing like that. Not like him.”

  Gail gripped Hannah’s arm. “You’re not as strong as he is, but you can stop him for a moment. Just long enough …”

  “Don’t listen to her!” Nick yelled as tears flowed from his eyes again. “This is just some kind of test from him. Can’t you see that?!”

  “He’s going to sacrifice you,” Gail went on like Nick hadn’t even spoken. She stared at Hannah like she still had eyes in her head. “He’s going to make everyone else kill you because he can’t make you do things like he can make the others. He might make your own friends kill you.”

  “I would never do anything like that,” Austin said.

  “You won’t have a choice, son,” Gail said to Austin, but she still had her eyeless face pointed at Hannah.

  “Don’t listen to her!” Nick said and got to his feet.

  Gail went on like she didn’t have much time. “He’ll keep your friends here in this town, but he can’t keep you, Hannah—that’s why he has to get rid of you.”

  “I … I don’t know what to do.”

  “What’s that?” Cheryl said as she rushed to the door that was still ajar.

  “What?” Austin asked, hurrying over to Cheryl.

  “You don’t hear that out there? There are … people coming.”

  Gail’s eyeless face was still on Hannah. “You don’t have any more time, child. You have to fight for yourself, for your friends. He’s coming for you. He can’t have you here a moment longer.�
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  “What do I do?”

  “Go to the front of the motel, by the office. There’s an old ravine about half a mile away. You can travel up the ravine for a while and you’ll be near the church without being seen by them.”

  “Who’s them?” Cheryl asked. “The whole town?”

  “Yes,” Nick told her, but he still stood by the bed. “The whole town’s coming for Gail. She’s disobeying the Pastor. We have to turn her in or he’ll make us to terrible things. He could break our bones. Or make us eat each other. He can do anything.”

  Hannah got to her feet. “I’m going.”

  Austin rushed over to Hannah. “You’re not going by yourself.”

  She stared at Austin for a moment and then nodded.

  “We’re going, too,” Cheryl said.

  Nick shook his head no violently. “I’m not going. No way. I’m not disobeying him. When they get here, I’ll tell them where you went to.”

  “Nick …” Cheryl said and stared at him like she didn’t know who he was anymore.

  “You don’t have much more time,” Gail whispered.

  “Thank you,” Hannah said and she ran for the door with Austin right behind her.

  Austin got to the door and looked at Cheryl. “Come on, Cheryl.”

  Cheryl looked at Nick with tears in her eyes.

  “He’s not going to come,” Austin said.

  Cheryl hesitated for only a moment, and then she followed Austin out the door.

  They ran to the motel office, and then past it, out into the desert wilderness. The night was pitch-black, but the countless stars and nearly full moon helped them a little. Austin glanced back towards the motel and he saw a group of people descending on the building with torches and primitive weapons that looked like sticks and rocks.

  They found the dry ravine and they climbed down into it. They hurried along the smooth, flat surface for half a mile and then they climbed up the rocky wall to the top. They saw the church in the distance, and even at night it seemed to gleam.

  “They’re coming back,” Cheryl said as they got out of the ravine and stood on the rocky desert ground.

  They saw the townspeople hurrying back past the houses that dotted the hillside, hurrying up towards the church at the top of the hill.