Easter Eggs and Bunny Boilers: A Horror Anthology

by Matt Shaw

  Tears pricked my eyes again.

  “Don’t forget it’s Easter, a time for resurrection, remember? If you look after me, then I will come back to you. We can do it.”

  Tears rolled down my cheeks and spotted on her t-shirt. “I will do whatever I have to, baby.”

  “I know. Get some dinner, let me rest up, I promise I won’t go anywhere.”

  I kissed her forehead and went into the kitchen to make a bowl of chicken soup and ate it watching the early evening news. Nothing I saw made any sense and the newsreaders didn’t seem as if they were speaking English. The local news wasn’t any better.

  I must have dozed for a while because when I woke up my soup had congealed in the bowl. There was a terrible smell in the flat, like the drains had backed up. I thought I could hear weeping and went into the bathroom, the stench hitting me like a slap.

  “I’m so sorry, Robbie, I had an accident.”

  I smiled and knelt beside the bath, kissing her gently on the forehead. Her skin felt warm and supple but she looked paler.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll clean you up.” I tried to laugh but the sound cracked halfway through and horribly resembled a sob. It was too much, I couldn’t deal with this. “At least you’re in the bath, eh?”

  “Cheeky,” she said.

  I got some fresh clothes from the bedroom and Dettol from the kitchen. When I got back, the smell bad enough to make me gag, I could see a dark shape soaking through the towel she was sitting on.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice heavy with sadness.

  I wanted to tell her it was okay but I couldn’t figure out how to so I set to work. It took me an hour to strip her, clean her up and put fresh clothes on. I was sick twice in the toilet but said I thought I was coming down with a bug or something, to try not to upset her, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. I noticed livid purple-red spots that looked like bruises on her buttocks and wondered whether to mention them. As she seemed so sad I decided not to make things worse.

  When I was done, Deb and the bath were clean but I felt filthy. I got undressed, gave myself a strip wash in the sink, then put on fresh clothes.

  I stood in the bedroom doorway, unsure of where to go since I didn’t want to go into the bathroom again. Disgusted by my own behaviour, I put on my trainers and jacket. “Just going out for a minute,” I called and went before she could say anything.

  The balcony was deserted but I could hear music from somewhere and people were shouting in the carpark. I leaned on the wall looked at the lights of Gaffney twinkling in the night. My head was aching, as if someone was trying to twist it around like an unco-operative childproof lock. I felt tears in my eyes again and roughly wiped them away.

  I couldn’t think straight, to make the connections that would help me to see a way out of this, to sort everything and make Deb better again. I hit my temples with the heels of my hands hard enough to make my vision swim but it didn’t make any difference.

  I was outside for maybe ten minutes and didn’t have a single coherent thought the whole time.

  She called me as I went back into the flat.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Thank goodness, I felt lonely.”

  Tears fell again and I waited until they’d stopped before I went into the bathroom. I stood in the doorway, watching her as she stared at the ceiling.

  “Hey,” I said but she didn’t turn her head. “Sorry I was gone so long. Are you hungry or thirsty?”

  “No, just lonely. Come and sit with me.”

  I sat down, leaning against the bath and rested my hand on her forehead. Her skin felt cold. I got another towel from the airing cupboard and draped it over her.

  “You’re so thoughtful, Robbie.”

  There was something wrong with her eyes and I leaned down to see. A dark, reddish-brown strip had formed across the centre of both eyeballs that looked incredibly painful and made me want to be sick again. But she hadn’t mentioned it, had she?

  “Do your eyes hurt?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because, well, you don’t seem to be blinking.”

  “Of course I’m blinking, how could I not. You’re just not seeing it, that’s all.”

  Was she right, had I made a mistake? We both knew my head wasn’t where it should be and still ached but when I looked again, the strip was still there. I moved so the overhead light could catch her and her eyes didn’t glisten. How could that possibly be?

  “Go and get some rest,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  I didn’t want to leave her again, it didn’t seem right. “I’ll sleep on the floor here.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, a smile in her voice, “go to bed. I’ll make myself better for the morning.”

  Reluctantly, I got up. Trying not to look at her darkening eyeballs, I gave her cool forehead a kiss and went into the bedroom. When sleep finally overtook me, it was fitful and full of horrible dreams that I couldn’t remember the second I woke up.

  I spent the morning of Good Friday dozing. I got up at lunchtime and went into the bathroom. Deb still stared at the ceiling and the strips on her eyeballs had got darker. There was a patch of goose-pimples on her shoulder and when I touched her skin, it was cold and hard. Her cheekbones seemed more pronounced, as were her eye sockets, as if the skin had somehow sagged.

  “Deb?” I said, quietly. When she didn’t reply I nudged her shoulder. It was very stiff. “Deb?”

  “Sorry,” she said after a moment or two, “I was sleeping.”

  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I know, I just need to rest. What day is it?”

  “Good Friday.”

  “I still have time then, Jesus didn’t rise until Easter Sunday.”

  I tried to remember the story but drew a blank. “If you say so.”

  She giggled, lightly. “How can you forget that? Go on, leave me be, let me rest.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “Not as much as I love you,” she replied, her voice already slowing as if she was dozing off.

  I kissed her cold forehead, had a pee and a quick wash in the sink and went into the lounge. There was nothing on TV and the old folks next door were listening to something that caught me just right, nagging in my ears and driving me crazy. I put my jacket on and went out.

  I don’t know how far I walked that day but I kept going until it got dark. I had lunch at McDonalds, walked through the park, checked out the few shops that were open and nipped into a pub for a pint. There weren’t many people about and the buses looked half empty. I wondered if everyone else was at home, enjoying time with their family, eating easter eggs and watching TV, talking and laughing and playing games. I couldn’t bite back the bitter laugh that escaped - my family had turned its back on me and all that was left of it, my lovely girlfriend, was lying in the bath at home not looking very well at all.

  I passed a church and could hear people singing. I stood by the front door for a while, wondering whether to go in or not and decided against it.

  As the light faded, I got a burger from a hole-in-the-wall we used in town but only ate half of it before realising I wasn’t hungry. I gave the remains to a homeless man outside the train station. He said something but didn’t have his teeth in so it might have been “thank you” or “fuck off”, I couldn’t tell. As I walked away, he broke the burger in half and gave his dog some.

  I knew something was wrong as soon as I opened the flat door. There was a smell I couldn’t place, like a butchers at the end of a long hot summers day but worse as well, like the time we’d discovered a badger dead behind the garages and spent a week watching it rot away.

  I rushed into the bathroom and the smell made me stagger back, my hand over my nose. I gagged, swallowing back bile.

  “I look bad, don’t I?” she asked.

  I clicked the light on and wished I hadn’t. Deb’s skin had turned green and her face was bloated. Her tongue was poking through her lips and he
r eyeballs, which had a thicker strip across them now, were bulging from under the lids.

  “You look different,” I said, trying not to scare her.

  “Tell me, I know I must smell as well.”

  There was nothing to say. Breathing through my mouth, I knelt beside the bath but couldn’t bring myself to touch her discoloured skin or look at her bulging eyes. I appalled myself, this was the girl I loved and I couldn’t even bear to touch or look at her.

  “Talk to me,” she said and sounded scared, as if my silence meant I was going to run away. How long had I left her alone? Was she worrying where I was, if I was ever going to come home? How could I have been so cruel?

  “I’m sorry, I went out to clear my head and time went too quickly, I didn’t mean to leave you alone for so long.”

  “That’s alright Robbie, you need some fresh air and I was resting. Two days and I’ll be back!”

  “I hope so.”

  “No,” she said, in a scolding tone, “there’s no hope about it, I will be back.”

  “Yes, Deb,” I said and got to my feet. I felt terrible for not kissing her but the nausea was rising and I knew if I touched her I would throw up. As it was, I managed to close the bathroom door and get into the kitchen before I brought today’s food back up in the sink.

  Sleep was even harder to come by that night and I kept being startled awake by dreams.

  At one point, I was aware of someone else in the bedroom. I turned and Deb was standing naked beside the bed, her entire body bloated and green. She held out her arms, the skin on her fingers drooping like badly fitted gloves.

  “Do you still love me?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Show me how much.”

  I woke up before she could climb onto the bed.

  Someone was banging on the door.

  I struggled to open my eyes. The clock read half past nine and I could hear things in the flat rattling. I could also smell something that seemed worse than yesterday.

  I went into the hall. Before I could go into the bathroom the person at the door shouted in between his thumps. “Open this fucking door, you loopy twat, I know you’re in there.”

  My breath caught in my throat, my heart rate quickening until it seemed to be pressing against my chest. Had her brothers figured out where we were? I pressed myself against the wall, to buy myself some thinking time.

  “I can see you through the glass, you fucking idiot. Open this fucking door.”

  My head pounded, I couldn’t focus or think straight. I needed to check Deb, I didn’t want whoever was at the door to wake and scare her.

  “Open it now or I’m breaking it down.”

  “Okay,” I called, “I’m coming.”

  Slowly, keeping my eye on the shape I could see through the frosted glass, I made my way to the front door. I put the chain on and clicked the latch.

  “Open it properly mate,” said the man. It wasn’t one of her brothers.

  “I can’t, I…”

  “Jesus,” said the man and gagged, “it is you. What the fuck have you got in there?”

  He hit the door where the chain was connected, making it dance in its clip. The glass rattled and he hit it again. “Open it!” he yelled, “now!”

  The screws holding the chain clip began to pull out. I put my shoulder against the door and tried to push it closed. He hit it again and again, each blow pulling the screws out further. I strained with everything I had to close the door but it was a losing battle.

  The chain pinged off and he shoved the door open, knocking me down. I looked up at our neighbour and he glared at me, his face red. His expression changed and he looked panicked for a moment then turned and threw up against the wall.

  I scuttled backwards, away from him and into the lounge, trying to keep him away from the bathroom. I bumped into the coffee table and rattled my soup bowl from yesterday.

  “What’s wrong with you man?” he demanded, stalking after me, his hand over his nose. “Can’t you smell it? My little ‘un has been sick half the night with it.”

  He passed the bathroom, stopped and stepped back. “Are you saving up a great shit or something?”

  Pushing open the bathroom door he gagged again. He turned on the light and threw up down himself.

  I got up, grabbed the bowl and ran at him, bringing it down on the back of his neck. He fell forward but regained his balance and turned, his eyes full of murder. Reaching out, his thick fingers closed around the neck of my t-shirt and he pulled me towards him. He punched me hard in the face and everything went black.

  That was almost ten years ago.

  I was arrested and tried for the murder of Deb Swales and GBH against Darren Driscoll, pleading not guilty to both. When they established Deb had died outside, though I maintained she hadn’t, I was sent for medical reports. It was decided I wasn’t insane but suffering from a mental disorder so I saw out my sentence in a secure psychiatric hospital. It could have been worse, I kept myself to myself and looked out of the windows and learned how to paint. They gave me tablets, made me do mental exercises and after a while, Deb stopped speaking to me. Five years ago though, the eggs started coming.

  “How do you do this?” asked Nurse Fletcher as she put the egg on the dresser in my room. “You don’t post it, you don’t have contact with the outside world, I just don’t understand it.”

  “I’m not sending it,” I said and she smiled, clearly not believing a word. “Look at it, Caramel eggs don’t even look like that now and it’s years out of date.”

  “That’s what I mean,” she said, “I don’t understand it.”

  A letter had been slid into the front of the packaging and she pulled it out. “What’s this?”

  “I don’t know, you found it.”

  She handed me the thin, umarked envelope. I opened it and took out a single sheet of writing paper that had been carefully folded down the middle.

  “Happy Easter, Robbie,” I read, “see you soon. It’s working!” I looked at Nurse Fletcher with tears in my eyes. “Did you hear that, she said it’s working.”

  “I’m sure,” she said and walked out.

  I sniffed the paper, kissed it and read it again, tears running down my cheeks. It was working, it was finally working.

  After all, I’d recognise Deb’s handwriting anywhere.

  THE END

  Bio

  Mark West lives in Northamptonshire with his wife Alison and their young son Matthew. Since discovering the small press in 1998 he has published over eighty short stories, two novels, a novelette, a chapbook, a collection and two novellas (one of which, Drive, was nominated for a British Fantasy Award). He has more short stories and novellas forthcoming and is currently working on a novel.

  Away from writing, he enjoys reading, walking, cycling, watching films and playing Dudeball with his son.

  He can be contacted through his website at www.markwest.org.uk and is also on Twitter as @MarkEWest

  TRADITION

  KYLE M. SCOTT

  Easter was supposed to be fun, wasn’t it?

  Well, this sure didn’t feel like fun to Billy.

  Not one little bit.

  Billy watched his older brother, Kevin; his perplexity growing with every moment. Kevin didn’t look like he was having any kind of good time either.

  In fact, Kevin looked scared.

  His brother wore deep furrows of worry on his face that had no godly right to be there, and the strange blend of determination and anxiety seemed to age his sibling right before his eyes. Kevin was only fifteen, and as handsome and carefree as any boy could hope to be.

  Usually.

  Yet as he determinedly dabbed the water paint onto the smooth surface of the hard-boiled egg, he looked worn down, fretful. His eyes seemed to dart out periodically into the darkening woods beyond their back porch, as though scanning the tree-line for...

  What?

  Billy had no idea, but whatever it was, it wasn’t something good.
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  Kevin was making him feel very uneasy.

  The two boys had been sat out here for over an hour now, whiling away the early evening as the sun sank low. Twilight approached, casting its waning light across the mountainous terrain beyond the forest. The silhouettes of the jagged mountain peaks stood up like fangs biting into the purple-hued sky. It was both beautiful and somehow daunting to Billy, and only made more so by Kevin’s mood.

  Casting his eyes from the dark, towering peaks, Billy’s eyes lowered to his own small patch of the world. Black shadows capered on the threshold between the boy’s backyard and the old forest that was their neighbour in this new home.

  Normally, the mysterious, deep woods transfixed Billy; filling his heart with boyish wonder. Abbington Wood was a place of infinite intrigue in his keen young mind. A place where anything was possible and where true mystery still resided, even in the age of IPads, the internet and Google.

  Since moving to the small town during the early onset of winter, Billy had longed to explore the dark, unending woods. To make them his domain. A place of dreams where he could be anything and anyone he so chose to be. An elf battling Orcs for dominion of the realm, a wild mountain man of the old west, a soldier headed into desperate conflict with an enemy that only he alone could withstand. If the new family home was a place of comfort and warmth, the forest was something much more enticing. It was a canvas for his imagination. A place where, when springtime finally bled into an endless boyhood summer, he could run wild and free.

  Well, here it was. It was springtime and the forest was in bloom. He longed to explore. To push forth from the edge of his home and experience the majesty of the old forest for himself. It rested right on his own doorstep like the gateway between worlds.

  Billy huffed.

  That had been the plan. To explore.

  Only a week ago, Kevin had promised to take him out there beyond their yard. Together they would follow the small dirt path that led from their backyard, pass under the thick canopies, and follow the track to wherever it may go. Two fearless explorers, proudly treading into territories new.