Disturbed Graves: Tales of Terror and the Undead

by D. Allen Crowley

  “You know what you’re problem is?” I said to Johnny as I slipped on my long, rubber rain coat.

  “No,” he snapped, “but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  Johnny cleared off the kitchen table and placed his bag on the chair at the table’s head. I finished buttoning my coat and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. With a grunt, I helped him manhandle Erik onto the table.

  “Your problem,” I said once Erik was lying between us, “is that you take things too fucking seriously.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is. Take tonight for example. Here it was a simple job, in and out, and you have to make it all serious.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Trevor?” Johnny said, as he opened his tool bag and pulled out a meat cleaver. He tested its edge with his thumb and nodded, seemingly satisfied with its sharpness.

  “What I’m saying Johnny, is that we had a very simple job. We were to pop into Erik’s place tonight, wait for old Erik to wander in the door, and collect the money he owes Fat Charlie.”

  I slapped Erik’s bare chest with a gloved hand for emphasis and went on, “You then have to make it all complicated because you’re worried about all kinds of crazy shit that doesn’t mean a thing in the real world.”

  Johnny set down his cleaver next to Erik on the table and grabbed a filleting knife. He pointed it at me and gestured with it as he retorted,” Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean there isn’t a vast global conspiracy.”

  “See!” I said, reaching into my own bag and grabbing a machete and a small mallet, “That’s the shit I’m talking about! Your crazy, ‘the-whole-world’s- run-by-a-bunch-of-men-in-a-secret-location-in-Switzerland’ schtick! There’s not some ultra-secret canal that runs everything, man!”

  “It’s cabal, moron. Not canal. And the Illuminati aren’t sequestered away in Switzerland. They’re spread all over the world and they run all the major corporations. They just meet once a year in Switzerland for Swiss hookers and Austrian chocolate. ”

  I rolled my eyes and walked around to the other side of the table, dragging Erik’s kitchen garbage can as I went. Johnny took his fillet knife and thrust it into Erik’s abdomen near the bottom of his rib cage. With an authoritative jerk, Johnny sliced downward and opened up Erick from his chest to his pubis. I scrambled to get the bucket closer as Erik’s guts slid out of him like slimy, hot ropes. I only managed to grab half of them before the rest hit the floor with a wet splat. I wasn’t fast enough and their weight pulled another large portion of his innards out of the garbage can with them. Gravity’s a bitch, sometimes.

  “Jeezy Creezy, Johnny! Give me some fucking warning next time,” I said as I scrambled to put Erik’s kidneys, liver and guts into the bucket.

  “Sorry.” Johnny said as I juggled Erik’s stomach into the bin. It was full of liquor and it was like trying to carry a water balloon coated in KY jelly.

  I didn’t believe Johnny was sorry for one minute.

  Through the open window, we heard some screams and the sound of sirens. Johnny and I both froze, and looked in the direction of the window. When the sirens grew quieter, we resumed work. While I got the rest of the guts squared away, Johnny grabbed his cleaver and hacked off Erik’s hand at the wrist.

  “So, like I was saying,” I went on, “Erik comes home, I tell him we need the money, and you make things difficult by having to keep watching the news while I’m trying to work. I mean, we’ve got a thing going, you and I. I play the nice guy who acts like their friend while you stand there all muscles and barely contained rage. It’s like Good Cop/Bad Cop, Johnny. Except for the part where we’re not cops and we’re leg breakers for a mob bookie. But no, you’ve got to go off script. You’ve got to get all wrapped up in the cable news networks and I’ve got to be like Abbot without Costello. I’m just saying you’re too damn serious.”

  “So, since I wasn’t Bad Cop, you had to shoot him?” Johnny said as he glanced at the window again. There was more screaming in the distance, and more sirens. None of them were in our immediate vicinity though.

  “We’re not talking about that unfortunate set of circumstances, right now. Don’t change the subject!” I said as I snatched up my knife and reached up and under Erik’s rib cage slicing his heart and lungs free. I threw the lungs in the bin and I gestured at Johnny with Erik’s heart, “I don’t give a shit that they’re saying there’re some rabies breakouts happening. All I care about is getting the job done. It’s just goddamned unprofessional, Johnny.”

  “It’s not rabies,” Johnny said angrily. To emphasis his point he swung the cleaver and angrily lopped off Erik’s right foot at the ankle. He tossed it in the garbage can, rather rudely spraying me with blood, “My conspiracy websites say that there’s more to this outbreak. That it has something to do with a virus or something. It’s been covered up by the world government, but there’s been disturbing reports about it.”

  “Oh, really? Let me guess, Bigfoot’s involved somehow. Or the alien overlords have concocted something to make all of us Earthmen sterile so they’ll be able to mate with all of our women?”

  “Now you’re just being spiteful, Trevor.”

  “Well, Christ in a casket, Johnny! What do you expect?” I said as I grabbed Erik’s other arm and my machete, “I mean I get that you like to watch the news, and I get that you’re into all of these nut job conspiracies, and it’s cool because old Erik here wasn’t home yet; but when the deadbeat gets back, you’ve got to get your head in the game! I mean…”

  I trailed off and looked out the window again. There were more screams and the smell of smoke wafted through the open window. In the distance, there was the pop-pop of gunfire.

  “What the hell?” I said, “I hear 9mm and rifle fire.”

  “More like .40 caliber and .223,” Johnny grunted as he cut Erik’s left arm off at the elbow. He leaned over Erik to throw it in the garbage bin when I felt a strange twitch in my hand.

  I looked down to see Erik’s right arm twitch again and I yelled in shock, dropping it.

  “What?” Johnny said, just as Erik opened his eyes and sat up.

  “Johnny!” I screamed, stepping back and struggling to get my rubber coat open to get at my gun. Johnny tried to escape, but it was no use. Erik’s right arm, which was still whole, grabbed Johnny and pulled him close. Erik snarled and, before Johnny could pull free, he lunged and bit Johnny on the side of the neck.

  Johnny made a half scream, half gurgling noise and I finally got my coat open. I pulled my .357 out of my shoulder holster just as Johnny gave Erik a mighty shove and he pulled free, falling to the dining room floor. There was a bright arc of red as Johnny fell and I realized that Erik must have clamped down and tore out Johnny’s carotid artery.

  I stood motionless as Johnny gurgled a few more times and the arterial blood sprayed like a fire hose on the wall beside him. He was dead within seconds.

  Erik snarled again and I turned to the corpse as it turned in very un-corpse-like fashion towards me, reaching hungrily with one full arm and another severed at the elbow. Erik tried to step off of the table, but since he was short a foot, he fell to the floor.

  “What the…?” I said, just as Johnny twitched a few times and turned eyes as dead as Erik’s on me. He began to rise to his feet. Closer to me, Erik was pulling himself along the floor towards me.

  I screamed again and bolted from the apartment and into the chaos of the night.

  Maybe there was something to Johnny’s conspiracy theories after all….

  The Wrong Prey

  This story is a modern homage to the works of the great 20th century horror writers, Charles Beaumont and Harlan Ellison. Both of them were noted for the work they did on Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone and this story pays tribute to the twist endings that made The Twilight Zone so great. And the genre defining writers like Beaumont and Ellison almost singlehandedly raised the technique from the commonplace into the realms of the sublime. Mine – of course - is
a more modern take and also a bit more lurid. - DAC

  Arthur waited in the warm night air like a statue. He stood beneath an old and twisted weeping willow tree, its branches hanging limply like the shed skin of molting green snakes. It was hot and humid, a typical July night. It was hot, but Arthur’s arms were covered in the chill of prickly gooseflesh. Arthur shivered with an almost overwhelming tremor of anxiety and excitement as he looked from beneath the willow, his gaze fixated upon the window of his prey.

  Just then, he was having a conversation with one of the voices in his head.

  The voices had started again a few days ago. They always came that way. They would start out quietly, almost like the hiss of static on a television in another room. But then they would grow. Soon, the cacophony would be like the constant endless roar of the surf at the ocean’s edge.

  That’s how it always was. The voices would start and get worse and worse until he had to hurt someone to shut them up. Kill someone.

  It was the only way to make the voices go away for a little while. He would rather live with the guilt and black remorse of his actions afterwards, then hear the voices. He would commit any unimaginable atrocity for the blessed silence of only his own voice in his head.

  And, as he stood there in the dark, one of them was yelling louder than the others.

  He thought of the shrieking, haranguing woman’s voice he heard as ‘Evangeline’. Evangeline was no woman he had ever met. Nor was she the voice of his mother, that abusive whore. No, his internal demons were his and his alone. Evangeline shrieked again and he cringed, raising a hand to his temple in pain.

  “Kill her, you weakling!” Evangeline raged, “Show some balls! You’re nothing! NOTHING! Are you going to let the prey continue to TAUNT you and TEASE you like the slut she is? The only way to make her pay is to kill her! The only way to make the pain stop is to kill her kill her kill her KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER …!”

  “Shut up! Shut up, Evangeline,” he murmured under his breath. To emphasize his point, he viciously struck his forehead with his fist, “Stop yelling! I’ll do it! I’ll do it, just stop yelling. Please.”

  He took a deep breath and pushed the voices down as far as he could, looking back towards the house and thinking back to when he had first seen the prey at the coffee shop.

  The coffee shop where he worked was the perfect place to meet potential prey. He had hunted from it for the last year and had decided a month or so ago to move on. The longer he stayed, the more suspicious the local police would become, and the sooner they’d start connecting dots between the victims and their daily schedules. Those dots would eventually lead back to the coffeehouse and, eventually, back to Arthur. He was a drifter with no family or history.

  If anything was sure to get him caught, it would be over fishing this particular pond.

  He knew he should have moved, but something had made him put off his flight from this city. Something held him here and prevented his leaving as he had left so many numberless cities before.

  Standing in the dark, jittery with anticipation of what was to come, he was now certain that the woman he’d seen tonight was the reason for his reluctance to move on. He was certain of it. Chance had kept him here to finish this one last hunt and he would be a fool to not recognize intervention by the Dark Gods.

  When he’d seen the girl at the coffee shop, he’d known she was to be his next. He had followed her home and, upon seeing where she lived, he’d known his instincts had been right. He could not have planned on so perfect a place to kill someone.

  She had entered the coffee shop just as day was turning to night.

  It was that time when the work crowd was dying down and the night time regulars with their black clothing, tattoos, and piercings began to filter in. Arthur was at the counter, thinking that the shop would soon be filled with the blue, sweet-smelling smoke of clove cigarettes and Marlboros, when she came in.

  For one blissful second, there was silence in his head as his internal demons all shut up and gasped in delicious ecstasy at the sight of her. She walked toward the counter and he felt his heart give a small jump.

  She wore a dark business suit with a white silk shirt that was unbuttoned enough to show the delicate, alabaster swell of cleavage. He thought the breasts were the most alluring parts of a woman and he had to close his eyes for a moment, shivering, as he imagined sliding a knife into one of her breast and licking the well of blood that its removal would bring. He opened his eyes again and she was still there, ordering a café mocha with a shot of Torani vanilla syrup and whipped cream. He filled her order on autopilot and watched her walk out of the shop, her short skirt swinging perfectly against her tanned thighs.

  He quickly turned and walked into the stockroom, bolting through the door at the rear of the shop. He didn’t care about his job anymore. All he cared about was the prey. Deep down, he knew that, one way or the other, he would not be returning to this job. He ran around the front of the shop to his motorcycle and started it up just in time to see the woman – the prey - hail a cab. He revved the motor and followed her here.

  He had been shocked at the remoteness of her home. As he’d thought several times that night, she was a gift from the Dark Gods. The older farmhouse was on the outskirts of town and it had a long, tree lined driveway with no nearby neighbors to speak of.

  He smiled at the thought that he could take his time. He smiled at the thought that she was alone. And he smiled at the thought that no one would hear her scream.

  He wiped a sweaty hand across his shirt, feeling the twitch of his taut chest muscles beneath it. She had moved into the bedroom fifteen minutes earlier and he knew it would soon be time to move into the house. She had begun undressing and he watched, excited at the voyeurism. She had stripped the business suit off and was standing in panties and her silk shirt when her phone rang.

  He watched her cross the room and pick up the phone. She spoke for a few minutes and he could only hear the sultry murmur of her voice, no words were intelligible. She eventually hung up, smiling. She stretched like a sensuous cat and Arthur felt himself go lightheaded at the thought that he would soon be touching her perfect, muscular body.

  The prey crossed from the bed to another door and entered. Arthur saw another light go on and cursed as he realized she had gone onto the bathroom. He knew this by the opaque coating on the window. He waited a moment or two more and saw her form behind the milky glass, obviously taking a shower.

  It was time.

  He ran back up the gravel driveway to his motorcycle. He had parked it behind an overgrown hedge and he double checked to make sure it was well hidden. Certain that it couldn’t be seen from the road, he quickly opened his saddlebags, pulled out his rolled up tool bag, and slipping it over his shoulder. That retrieved, he sprinted back to the house, passing the bathroom window and reassuring himself that the prey was still showering.

  He circled to the patio door and smiled to himself. It was a toothy, lupine grin; a predatory grin of joy. She had left the glass door open and the only thing that stood between he and his prey was a screen door.

  Arthur reached behind himself, pulling out the knife he always kept strapped at the small of his back. It was his favorite knife. And that was how he saw it in his head. The Favorite. With capital letters.

  He had made The Favorite himself in one of his old apartments, several years and countless cities ago. He had lovingly ground and polished The Favorite’s wickedly curved blade until It was razor sharp. The first kill he had used It on had been a teenage runaway he had picked up at a bus station. The runaway had been a thin and beautiful boy with long brown hair. Arthur remembered that the boy had looked surprised, almost outraged, when Arthur had drawn the blade from beneath his coat and thrust It casually into the boy’s left eye.

  Before that kill, he had wrapped The Favorite’s handle with parachute cord. That changed after It had been blooded by the runaway, Arthur decided The Favorite needed a souvenir of It
s own. To that end, he had taken one of the runaway’s leg bones and made it into a handle. That had been another night of divine guidance from the Dark Gods. The knife’s new bone handle had fit Arthur’s hand as though it were made for it.

  Now, years later, the handle was stained a rusty brown color from all of the blood It had spilled.

  Arthur shivered at the memory as he used The Favorite to now slit the screen. He slipped into the darkness of the prey’s kitchen and padded silently across the linoleum, his favorite knife held before him, his thoughts only on the prey.

  He traversed the hallway and slid into the prey’s bedroom, his nostrils flaring at her scent. She wore a floral perfume, but it could not mask the smell of the woman under it. Hers was an earthy, fertile smell; the smell of a woman in her physical and sexual prime. To Arthur it was a heady, arousing intoxicant. It was the essence of his prey. He stepped into the steamy bathroom and reached for the curtain, barely able to control the shake of his hand. He pulled the curtain back, relishing her shock and terror as she jumped like a startled deer.

  “Time to die,” he laughed, striking out at her.

  He unrolled his tools on the kitchen counter and took a moment to look at her unconscious form. She was tied to the kitchen table, glorious in her nakedness. He looked back to his tools, lovingly fingering the dental hooks, knives, razors, fish hooks, skewers, and bone saws he had spent years accumulating. The prey stirred, moaning as she came around and he reached for a long, curved blade. He was so enrapt with her beauty and his work he almost did not hear the car as it slowly pulled up the gravel driveway outside.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, dropping the knife and reaching for a roll of duct tape. He quickly used it to gag the girl and had just switched off the kitchen light when he heard the car engine turn off. He slid into a dark corner of the kitchen, blending into the darkness. Outside, there was the creak of a car door opening and the subsequent sound of it slamming shut.