Disturbed Graves: Tales of Terror and the Undead

by D. Allen Crowley

  He listened in a state of excitement as he heard the crunch of approaching footsteps.

  Arthur had never before been interrupted in his work and, until now, had never realized the thrill of being discovered. He enjoyed the emotional feeling of panic he felt rising within himself. New emotions were so hard to come by for him. The panic was quickly suppressed though as he realized tonight would be a ‘double event’.

  Whoever had been unfortunate enough to interrupt him would soon be joining the girl in terror and degradation. He slowly withdrew The Favorite from its sheath and held it at his side, ready to let it do what it had been made for.

  Soon enough, the footsteps stopped at the torn screen door and Arthur saw the silhouette of a man, his head cocked in the newly risen moonlight.

  “Felicia?” the newcomer queried softly. He was greeted by the muffled moan of the prey fifteen feet away.

  “Felicia!” the man repeated, stepping through the screen and reaching for the light.

  Arthur let him flick the light on before rushing at him, swinging the wickedly long knife towards the newcomer. He had time to see a man in his thirties with short, spiky hair and a black business suit on, but was shocked to see no fear or surprise on the man’s face. Faster than Arthur could react the man lunged towards him -- fluidly moving out of the knife’s arc and raising an elbow. The newcomer spun unbelievably fast, suddenly inside of Arthur’s guard, and drove the elbow up and into Arthur’s chin.

  The killer felt his teeth clack together with a sound like a firework in his head and there was a burst of blue lightning behind his eyes. As he felt himself slide to the floor an unbidden image of himself sliding into a pool of black ink come to mind. And then, halfway to the floor, he himself slid into the dark embrace of unconsciousness.

  Arthur awoke with a start, his whole mouth and jaw sore and his head foggy with pain. It took a moment for him to realize that he was naked and tied to the table that the prey had so recently occupied. He screamed in frustration and pulled at the ropes that bound him, but quickly discovered that they were sufficiently tight and unbreakable.

  There was movement to his side and he turned his head, snarling like an animal in a trap.

  The prey was standing there, now dressed in a black track suit and leaning against the stove. Her arms were crossed and her hair was pulled back. She was staring at him coldly. The newcomer was standing at the counter, examining Arthur’s tools. The man looked up at Arthur and smiled.

  “Who sent you?” he asked.

  Arthur snarled and pulled again at his bindings. The man shook his head with something like sorrow and looked back to the kit. He pulled out one of Arthur’s tools; a ten inch long stainless steel hook used for deep sea fishing. The man held it up to the light and looked at it curiously. Arthur bit into his tongue, drawing blood. The voices in his head were so loud. The combination of that, and the fact that he had been captured and fettered were shattering his already dangerously damaged mind.

  “I won’t ask you again. Who sent you?” the man asked.

  Still Arthur said nothing. The other man looked at Felicia and shrugged. She nodded and he crossed to Arthur. Without another word the man grabbed Arthur’s leg and slid the hook deep into his thigh muscle.

  Arthur shivered in commingled agony and ecstasy. The other man’s brow furrowed when he saw that the pain caused a stirring and thickening in Arthur’s naked loins.

  Arthur began laughing, the sound chilling in its madness.

  The man stepped back and frowned. After a long moment, he spoke again, “You aren’t a hired killer are you?”

  Arthur snorted at the odd question, finally speaking, “No.”

  As the man pondered this, Arthur began laughing again, finally crossing into full blown madness. The man stepped back to Arthur and pulled the hook out with a smooth motion and Arthur almost cried out in grief at the lessening of pain. The man considered the hook again before tossing it on the counter.

  “Talk about a bad day,” the man said, “You have no idea what you’ve done do you?

  “I’ve been surprised,” Arthur spat out, “but I’ll soon be free! THEY won’t let me fail in my mission to hunt the prey. I’ll drink hers and your blood! It will be done! And I’ll do it slow. I will show you worlds of pain! Worlds of agony! Worlds of madness! I am the Deliverer of Death! I am the Darkness! I am the messenger and angel of the Dark Gods! I will cleanse myself in the blood and shit and piss that pours from your cooling corpse!”

  Arthur laughed again, the braying sounds discordant in the small kitchen. His eyes rolled madly in their sockets and he began to froth at the mouth. He pulled harder at the ropes that held him.

  The man watched this for a few moments until Arthur quieted down some and leaned over the serial killer, sympathy in his eyes.

  “You poor, crazy bastard,” he said, “you’ll never believe how bad your luck is. You see, I’m a professional killer. Felicia – your prey – is one also. I was stopping by to pay her for our last job when I found you engaged in your little wacky tableau here. My first thought was that you were another professional come to take care of Felicia for some job in the past. So, you can imagine my surprise to find that you’re just some run of the mill, psychopathic, run-of-the-mill serial killer.”

  Some of what the man said cut through the haze of Arthur’s insanity. The man saw the glimmer of lucidity in Arthur’s eyes and shook his head.

  “Fucking amateur,” he sighed. He shrugged at Felicia again and walked to the refrigerator to get a bottled water.

  As he did this, Felicia came over and leaned over to scrutinize Arthur’s face. After a moment she shook her head also.

  “Do you know the difference between you and I?” she asked, “You do this because you’re insane, or because your neighbor’s dog told you to kill, or because the implants in your head compel you to break into people’s houses and murder them. Whatever it is, it’s because you’re a nut job. And that’s where we’re different.”

  She leaned even closer, so close he could smell the shampoo she’d used on her hair in the shower. Her voice dropped to a whisper.

  “You see,” she said, “this is my job. I have no fucked up compulsion. I have no remorse. There’s no emotion to what I do. It’s all business. And that coldness, that calculation, is why I’m going to kill you.”

  She stood and reached to the counter, pulling out The Favorite and testing its edge on her thumb. She considered it then considered him. With a flourish borne out of practice and devotion to her craft, she spun the knife in her hand and smiled at Arthur.

  For the first time in his life, Arthur felt his blood run cold.

  As she advanced towards the serial killer, he began squirming against his bindings again, but to no avail. Her cold smile told him everything he needed to know. His last thought before he descended the rest of the way into gibbering madness was why she grinned so.

  She smiled at the thought that she would take her time.

  She smiled at the thought that he was alone.

  And she smiled at the thought that no one would hear his scream.

  Sepulcher

  Sepulcher is another flash fiction piece that explores the idea of where legends come from. I refer to the monster in this as a proto-vampire; the sort of creature that hints at the evil and alien nature of a true vampire, devoid and stripped and predating the Victorian trappings of Bram Stoker’s creation. This is the core of today’s vampires, a creature that resembles modern literary vampires only in its role as a devourer of blood.

  Everything else is so much more primal and terrifying. - DAC

  It had slept beneath the church for centuries, trapped by the walls that stood above it. It was a thing of evil - the source of Romania’s oldest legends and myths. Always hungry for blood and flesh, the smell of Jake’s blood awoke it from its long slumber.

  Above it, Jake lay unconscious and unaware.

  Jake had found the church when he had slipped in the wet earth of the f
orest and pitched forward into a dark ravine. He had quickly pushed up from the clinging, saturated earth and rolled over painfully, crying like a child. As he looked up into the sobbing night sky above him, the pelting rain washed the mud from his face. He had felt the sting of blood in his eye and reached up to wipe at the head wound that, even now, was still bleeding.

  Just then, there was a searing blast of lightning and he saw the ruins of an old church. It was ancient and the forest had all but swallowed it. Its ruined shape showed decades – if not centuries – of neglect.

  In his weakened state, Jake saw it only as shelter from the relentless storm.

  The last several hours of his life were a confused and twisted tangle of pain. He knew he had been on a plane flying from Rome to Bucharest for business. He and his business partner, Anna, were flying to meet a representative from a Romanian distillery. They were hoping to sign an importation agreement and start shipments of absinth within a month.

  “Absinth is forbidden. And people long for the forbidden, Jake, “ Anna had said, a year earlier, “Every college student, Goth, and artist wannabe will want some of the same liquor that drove Van Gogh mad and made him cut off his own fucking ear!”

  Agreeing with her, they had started their import business and things were just starting to come together. They had bars lined up to sell the green, anise-flavored liquor and they had an advertising campaign ready to roll. All they needed was to secure a good supply of product. And so they’d arranged the meet in Bucharest.

  The trip from Cleveland to Rome had been uneventful. It had even been fun; they’d both seen it as a grand adventure, a fulfillment of their dreams. Always friends, Jake and Anna had even begun sleeping together in Rome. Sex and business never mixed, but after a few bottles of Italian wine they had fallen into bed and their inhibitions stripped off as quickly as their clothes.

  Jake tried to remember what had happened earlier that night, but it was all a confusing mess. He recalled boarding the small commuter jet to Bucharest. There were flashes of lightning, the violent shaking of turbulence, and a loud explosion. He remembered the rush of wind and the terrifying lurch of his stomach as the jet plummeted earthward. He remembered screaming in despair and helplessness… and then nothing.

  He awoke in the wreckage an unknown time later to find Anna looking at him, her eyes unnaturally wide. It took him several seconds to realize that her head was not attached to the rest of her body. He had gone a little mad then. He crawled screaming from the wreckage of the plane, staggering out into the pouring rain and unwholesome forest where he found himself now.

  Already soaked to the bone, lost, and freezing; he pushed himself up from the mud where he had fallen and lurched towards the blackened, twisted old church. He crawled through a hole in its crumbled wall, staggered through the weeds and debris that littered its floor, and squeezed under the black, moss-covered stone altar. Finally out of the cold and driving rain, Jake fell into an exhausted sleep.

  Unbeknownst to him, his arrival had not gone unnoticed. His blood’s warm and salty scent made something evil stir beneath him. It clawed its way up through the earthen floor behind the altar and padded silently towards Jake. It was not human, but it haunted the memory of men. A ghoul from man’s worst nightmares, its foul odor and fetid breath made Jake stir.

  Jake awoke, looking up to see the monster’s evil, twisted face staring down at him with naked hunger. Before Jake could scream, the creature eagerly scooped one of Jake’s eyes from his skull as casually as one would dip a chip in salsa.

  Outside the storm continued as, inside, Jake screamed.

  Whom the Gods Love Die Young

  This is a story I wrote for a compilation of short zombie stories on a website I frequent. The organizer kind of flaked and I heard nothing else, so I’ve decided to include it here. It’s a more romantic approach to the zombie story, but romantic only in that it shows the regret, desperation, and madness of being alone at the end of world.

  The website, by the way, is www zombiehunters.org. Zombie Squad, as they’re called on their forum and promotional material, is a disaster preparedness organization that encourages its members to prepare for any eventuality. The Zed word in their name is because they dig zombies, and the metaphor of zombies is used in disaster preparation; in other words, if you can prepare for and survive the zombie apocalypse, you can survive anything -- whether it’s hurricanes, tornados, floods, civil unrest, earthquakes, asteroid impacts, and even the Yellowstone super volcano getting cranky. - DAC

  “For how much longer can I howl into this wind? For how much longer can I cry like this? A thousand wasted hours a day, just to feel my heart for a second. A thousand hours just thrown away, just to feel my heart for a second. For how much longer can I howl into this wind? “

  - The Cure, A Thousand Hours

  The sunlight was as dark and dirty as an old dishrag where it fell on the table in front of him. Its wan light was like a ripsaw, jagged and cut by the boards across the kitchen windows. He had been sitting at the table most of the morning, listening to the silence of the house. Occasionally, there was a moan from outside that seeped into the cave of the house like a bat fluttering and flapping into a crevice.

  There was a thump as one of the things outside banged against one of the outside walls in its endless search for food. He ignored it because he knew that the old house was secure. He took a sip of the cold coffee in front of him, his gun lying next to it, and realized that he had not moved in several hours; long enough for the coffee to have gone cold and the coffee machine to have shut off. He reached a hand up to his face, wearily scratching at the beard that covered his once smooth face. He quickly stopped, though; it sounded too much like the scraping of dead fingers on splintering wood.

  There was another bang, and a moan at the front door, and he looked away from the inky depths of his coffee cup towards the sound. He could see the front door from the kitchen. The kitchen table was positioned so that he could see both entrances to the house. The back door was down a single step to his left, where it led to a small courtyard, and the front door was out the kitchen door and across the dark-floored center hallway. Through the gaps in the boards across the high front door window, he saw a shadow move like a vulture flying over a field. There was a low grunt, and then a squeaking rattle as the small mail slot on the front door moved.

  “Mail’s here, honey.” He said to the empty kitchen, before laughing. The laugh was a choking, panicky sound; like the overacted giggle of Tom Waits as Renfield in that movie, Dracula. At least that’s what the man thought when he heard it bubble up out of him like a sewer backing up into the basement.

  ‘I’m losing my mind,’ he thought, as the mail slot squeaked again and a gnarled, bloody hand pushed it open again. Even from way back in the kitchen, he saw the dried blood on the hand and its ragged, torn fingernails. There was a groaning, moaning sound that he recognized all too well, and then he saw a face appear in the slot, a face with two gray, dead eyes covered in a film and cloudy like cataracts. The eyes saw him sitting there in the slash of half light, and their owner snarled hungrily.

  The man got up, taking his time to walk down the long hallway to the front door. He raised his gun, stuck it through the mail slot, and pulled the trigger. The mail slot slammed shut.

  Then - Summer

  In another life, he stood in the courtyard behind the house. They had just moved in. The house was an all brick, classic English Tudor. The dark brick, coupled with the cream and white stucco accents, and the high-walled courtyard were exactly what she’d always wanted, and she had fallen in love with it the first time she’d seen it. He could deny her nothing, and they’d bought it even though it was outside of their price range. He’d just pick up some extra shifts when he could to help with the mortgage.

  It was all worth it if she was happy.

  He was grilling, the smell of charcoal and sizzling steaks wafting about him and covering him in a primitive, masculine cologne. His friend,
Allen, walked up, handing him a Yuengling lager.

  “You’re a lucky man, bro,” Allen said, drinking deep from his own beer.

  “I am.” The man said simply, agreeing. He looked across the courtyard at her. She was showing two women from the neighborhood the English garden she had planted. Petite, bubbly, and beautiful, she was standing beneath the shade of a mammoth oak tree, looking like some magical creature. The combination of the moss-covered flagstones, the gnarled oak tree, the lush green plants, and the way the sun lovingly bathed her in a soft light only made her seem even more like some ethereal, otherworldly fairy.

  She turned, feeling his eyes on her, and smiled. She held a hand to her stomach, gently rubbing it. She had told him the night before that her period was three weeks late and they had run to the local pharmacy to find a home pregnancy test. There had been a few moments after they’d returned home where they’d looked at one another seriously, before breaking into laughter at the possibility of her being pregnant. She’d insisted he stay with her through the whole process, and the laughter had continued as he stood in embarrassment in the bathroom doorway as she tried to get a sample. A few minutes wait, and a small plus sign in the end of the test stick changed their lives forever.

  They had made love afterwards. He told her that her breasts felt fuller already, and she agreed. Afterwards, as they lay entwined in the sheets and each other’s limbs he told her how much he loved her, and cried with happiness. She held him close, the feel of their touching, naked skin like a warm perfection. She loved him because she knew that it was only with her that he could be this emotionally open, and he loved her because she simply loved him. He had always felt grotesque around her, like a piece of flawed, brittle shale next to the flawlessness of a cut diamond.