Easter Eggs and Bunny Boilers: A Horror Anthology

by Matt Shaw

  “Come on. Let’s go inside, buddy.” Kevin said.

  Billy got to his feet, stretched and groaned. They’d been sat out here a long time. “Kev, can I ask you something else?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s the tradition?”

  Kevin frowned. “I’m not sure how it works, or what it means. All I know is that the first born child of any household, under the age of eighteen, had to paint themselves onto an egg and offer it up to…it.”

  “Like a sacrifice?” Billy asked, playing along. He was impressed by his own acting skills, as well.

  “I don’t know. I think so. People here think the egg represents the human soul, and you have to offer yours up to the thing in the woods. It’s a mock effigy of sorts, they said. It’s not really your soul, that’s what the Indian taught them, but it’s what the egg represents that the thing out there desires. All I know is that if you don’t leave the egg out there by midnight, right by the foot of the woods, then it comes…

  “It comes for you instead, Billy, and it takes the real thing.”

  “Scary.” Billy said in a hushed tone.

  Kevin frowned. “You believe me, right? I know it sounds crazy, but you said you’d believe me.”

  Billy mustered up his best, most sincere face. “I do. I promise.

  “Good.” Kevin smiled a little. It barely touched his eyes, but it was there nonetheless.

  Great performance, Billy thought again.

  “Let’s go inside, kiddo. We’re done here. We can watch a movie now.”

  Together, they left the porch and made for the warmth and comfort of their home.

  As Billy entered the house, he cast a quick glance over his shoulder and immediately felt like a fool. He knew this was all make-believe, but still…

  Still he imagined he could feel those watchful eyes, nestled in the gathering dark.

  *

  Kevin had been sat by the window for the last hour.

  Billy found the whole charade very amusing. Since coming indoors, they’d spent the remainder of the evening watching a movie; an old classic starring Peter Cushing that both boys had agreed was much better than most of the modern horror fare. They’d eaten popcorn, drank soda and laughed together at the shoddy special effects. Billy figured the teeth on the vampire had been purchased in a fancy dress shop, and the cape too, but the tall actor who played the count had really sold the role.

  By the time the movie was done, Billy was tired.

  He’d have liked nothing more than to crawl into bed and drift off to sleep, but that wasn’t an option. He was determined to let his brother’s little game play all the way out.

  After all, Kevin had wasted his time with the egg painting and the outlandish spook story, so why shouldn’t he, in return, allow his brother to waste some time of his own?

  Kevin had demanded they turn out the lights in their bedroom. He said he wanted to sit by the window in the dark, and watch the backyard. Billy, of course, had gone right along with him. Kevin peered out into the yard; the soft moonlight casting his face in a pale, translucent glow. He hadn’t moved position in at least ten minutes. His foot tapped rhythmically on the carpet as he stared out into the darkness of the Easter night.

  Billy was laid back on his own bed, propped up by two pillows. In his hands he held his IPad. The game he was playing was barely holding his attention, but he was steadily growing more and more bored with the ruse.

  How long did Kevin plan to keep this up for?

  Billy supposed it didn’t matter. Looking at the clock by his bed, he noted that it was now two minutes till midnight. Kevin had said the ‘thing’ came for its prize at the stroke of the midnight hour, so soon, this would all be over.

  Billy smiled.

  It was time for him to play his hand.

  He laid the IPad on his lap, clicking the ‘off’ button as he did so, and turned to his brother. Kevin was play-acting as though he was lost in his own world.

  “Kevin?” Billy asked, breaking the prolonged silence.

  His brother’s voice was hushed. He never turned to respond, and instead just stared out into the moonlit yard and the wall of trees beyond.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Do you see what time it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have something I have to tell you…”

  “And what’s that?” Kevin asked, with little interest.

  “I know you made that story up.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, I know you made the story up. I’m twelve, Kev. I’m not a kid anymore. You almost had me fooled for a while. Almost, but not quite. I’m not as dumb as you think I am.”

  “You said you believed me.”

  Billy smiled in the darkness. “I lied.”

  Kevin peered out the window. “It doesn’t matter. It’s almost time now. It’ll be here soon. It’ll take the offering and it’ll leave.”

  “You can drop the act now, Kev.” Billy let the moment draw out, savouring it.

  “It’s not an act.” Kevin’s tone was dead flat.

  Billy sat up in his bed. “I can’t believe you thought I’d fall for it, but the jokes on you. I’ve been pretending this whole time that I was scared. You’re not the only one who can play act, you know.”

  Kevin’s reaction was muted. “Whatever.”

  Billy felt anger bubble up inside him. He’d hoped to get a better reaction that this. At the very least he’d hoped to make his brother laugh, or get mad, or…something. Anything but this.

  Kevin just stared into the night, as though Billy’s words had no effect at all.

  “Kevin, you can come away from the window now. Let’s go to bed. It’s late, and there’s nothing out there.” Billy swung his legs over the side of the bed and planted his feet on the carpet. He reached to the bedside cabinet and opened the small drawer.

  “I even brought your dumb egg back in for you when you were showering. Figured you might want to keep it,” he said.

  As Billy lifted the egg from the drawer, Kevin spun around on his seat, fast as lightning. Terror seemed to cast a burning light behind his horrified gaze, as his eyes fell on the egg.

  Why was he still acting?

  The joke was over.

  He was acting, wasn’t he?

  Billy felt the first sickening stab of real fear soak into his psyche. His brother’s face was a picture of horror. In the moonlight’s glow, he looked like a ghost. A wraith, etched forever in terrible torment.

  Kevin screamed. “Why would you do that?!”

  Billy flinched from his older sibling’s outrage. “D-do what?” he stammered.

  Kevin’s eyes darted down to his wristwatch, tears welled in his eyes. He was trembling uncontrollably; his whole body seized in the grip of a terror that Billy realised, with a rising wave of purest dread, could only be real.

  What was going on?

  Billy felt sick.

  “It’s too late!” The words came out of his brother’s mouth like a long, agonised moan, soaked in a hopeless despair.

  Billy was shaking himself, now.

  “I’m…I’m sorry!” he stammered, as his stomach flipped over on itself.

  What had he done?

  “You’ve killed me, Billy!”

  “I…I’m sorry.” Billy begged. “I was only…”

  The rest of Billy’s words stuck in his throat.

  His mind reeled as stark blind terror wracked his body.

  He was looking beyond his terrified brother, now.

  Outside the window.

  There was something out there.

  There was something out there in the dark.

  It was a shadow with shadows, and as Billy watched, frozen in shock, the dark figure rose up behind his brother, separated from Kevin by nothing but the fragile pane of glass.

  Billy couldn’t make it out properly. The darkness clung to the impossible being like a second skin, but one thing was for sure.

  It was not human.
>
  Long, spindly appendages rose from the bulk of the black creature like the legs of a giant spider. There were more than Billy could count.

  “B-Billy?” Kevin was crying openly, having seen the stark terror that gripped Billy. He never turned to face the looming thing outside their home, nor even made a move from the window as its vast shadow spread across the carpet like a hellish Rorschach, engulfing his own. It all happened so fast, and in his shock, Billy thought Kevin could no more move his body than the dead could shift their headstones from the depth of their sodden graves.

  Suddenly, there was a thunderous crash. The window behind his brother shattered as the creature outside raised a huge limb, bristling with coarse insect hair, and thrust it through the glass.

  Time slowed to an endless, awful crawl as Billy watched a long, razor sharp talon, like that of a mantis, slide around his brother’s waistline. Below the huge grasping apparatus, a line of blackest crimson began to flow, dark as night, where the creature’s tooth-like tubercles sliced the skin and opened Kevin’s stomach as it held him.

  Billy gagged as he watched the glistening intestines housed within begin to swell and push their way free of their prison.

  The thing’s head loomed in over his brother.

  Billy screamed for his mom.

  He screamed for his dad and for Jesus, for God and for himself.

  And for his brother.

  No help came.

  Though the moon’s light was low, Billy could now make out the abomination’s features.

  He wished he could not.

  Its smooth dome resembled that of a spider’s. The entire front area of the head was covered in a vast cluster of black, pitiless eyes that seemed to stare as one, right into the centre of Billy’s soul. Beneath its countless, bulbous, black diamond orbs there was a gaping maw, almost perfectly cylindrical. A huge hole ringed with row after row of long, vicious looking teeth, thin as needles. Drool spilled from its meat-grinder mouth as it began to drag Kevin towards it. As he watched in repugnant, frightful awe, something moved within the dark abyss of its gullet, clicking together like pincers. A hideous mandible designed to tear and rend.

  And feed.

  It never made any other sound as it pulled his screaming, flailing brother close to its dark bosom, though the creature seemed to relish the terror it inspired.

  It worked slowly, dragging Kevin through the shattered, jagged glass, piercing his skin and tearing his soft flesh to ribbons. As his screams of terror crossed over into mind-ripping exclamations of agony, the thing’s cluster of abominable eyes seemed to shine with fresh fervour. His arms and shoulders spurted warm blood from a hundred wounds as the glass cut deep.

  His eyes fixed on Billy, just for a fleeting moment.

  It lasted longer for Billy than a million lifetimes. In his eyes, he saw the true depth of his betrayal.

  His brother’s eyes seemed to plead, and to question.

  One blood soaked and shredded arm reached out toward him with shivering, desperate fingers. Billy reached out himself to touch his brother one last time, but before he could, the black thing’s mandibles burst forth from its vile gullet and sliced into the skin and muscle of Kevin’s shoulder. His brother’s outstretched hand instinctively receded, clasping at the gushing wound. Ignoring Kevin’s feeble attempts to protect himself, the hellish creature tore a chunk of meat free, working the food into its maw where it ground it to pulp. The geyser of blood that erupted from the vicious laceration covered his screaming brother’s face in an arterial spray.

  With lightning speed, it turned its abhorrent hide toward the woods. Holding Kevin close in its long front limbs as a spider would a fly, it scuttled off into the night in near silence, like a fevered nightmare suddenly dispelled.

  Just as quickly as the world had descended into a madness of screams and chaos and horror, it was over.

  A soft wind caressed the cracked and ruined window, causing the small ragged remnants of Billy’s brother to sway gently, like tiny flags of skin waving farewell to their owner.

  On legs that felt like lead, Billy got to his feet and staggered to the ruined window. Resting his hands on the blood-slick, wooden pane, he peered out into the night.

  In the yard, he could make out dark splashes of blood from his brother’s wounds, trailing towards the hateful black of the forest, and nothing more.

  Kevin was gone.

  Billy’s eyes fell on the treeline, hoping beyond hope to catch a final glimpse of his poor, lost brother. The brother he’d condemned to death just as surely as if he’d loaded a gun, pointed at Kevin’s skull, and pulled the trigger.

  He thought about the thing he’d seen, the giant insect that wasn’t an insect, but an abomination; a mockery of all that dwelled in the natural world.

  A gun would have been better.

  A gun would have been much, much better.

  As though summoned from hell to affirm his thoughts, a scream pierced the stillness of the night.

  He’d never heard such a pitiful, excruciating sound; not in a thousand horror movies nor a thousand nightmares.

  It sounded like all the instruments of hell were being used on his brother, squeezing every drop of pain and torment from his quivering flesh.

  In his mind, Billy began to form pictures, images to compliment the awful sounds leaking from the darkness of the old woods. He imagined terrible, unspeakable things, and the waking nightmare in his mind’s eye played out every bit as long as his brother’s suffering.

  Finally, the sounds of his Kevin’s agony died on the wind. The night grew still once more.

  Billy thought back to what his brother had said.

  ‘All I know is that if you don’t leave the egg out there by midnight, right by the foot of the woods, then it comes. It comes for you instead, Billy, and it takes the real thing’.

  The real thing…

  He thought about those words and understood with terrible clarity that Kevin’s true suffering would last a lot longer than his screams.

  It would last till the stars fell from the sky and the oceans turned to dust.

  *

  Billy sat on the sofa, waiting for the familiar sound of keys turning, and for the front door to open. They’d be home soon, mum and dad. Home from their carefree night out on the town with their new friends.

  The house was quiet now, and wreathed in darkness.

  He’d turned all the lights off.

  Billy knew enough about insects to know that many were attracted to the light.

  He would sit there in perfect darkness, and wait.

  In his hand, he held the small boiled egg.

  He studied it in the gloom.

  On the small, near featureless face, Kevin had painted a small smile. His way of seeing the bright side on all things, Billy mused. And it was accurate, after all. Kevin had loved to smile. And to laugh.

  Billy wiped the fresh tears from his eyes, and cleaned the snot from his nose with a handkerchief. The egg felt lighter now than it should. It was strange, but he felt sure there was something else in there besides the boiled egg.

  He shook it ever so lightly.

  Yes, there was a sloshing sound.

  Nothing like a boiled egg at all.

  Perhaps Kevin hadn’t boiled it properly, and some of the yolk was still soft.

  Billy knew better.

  Whatever was now housed in the fragile shell would remain in his protection. He swore he’d keep the egg safe. Whatever it was, it was all he had left of his brother.

  Outside he heard a car pull up.

  At this time of night, it could only be his parents.

  He took a deep breath. As their soft laughter grew louder, there was a small squeal of delight from his mom, and a gruff snort from his dad, as one of them fumbled with the keys.

  Billy reckoned they’d been drinking.

  That was good.

  It would make this whole thing a little easier to take.

  He struggled to compose him
self as the battle with the keyhole was won, and the door swung open and the lights came on.

  A soft wind followed his stumbling, drunken parents over the threshold, and on it, he imagined he heard his brother, calling out in horror from a place far, far away.

  On seeing Billy sat there, red-eyed and tearful, his parent’s mirth died on their lips. Concern eclipsed the frivolity like ink spilled over white paper.

  He tried to compose himself.

  He really did.

  Instead, Billy burst into tears and reached out instinctually, desperate to be held by his parents as the nightmare of it all finally overwhelmed him. As his arms stretched forward, hungry for embrace, the small egg toppled from his hand.

  He watched in despair as it shattering on the hardwood floor.

  Billy screamed then.

  He screamed till his throat was torn and his vocal chords were all but snapped.

  And when his mom and dad saw what poured from the cracked and splintered eggshell and seeped between the wooden floor panelling, they screamed right along with him.

  THE END

  Bio

  Kyle M. Scott is a horror author hailing from the dark and desolate wastelands of Glasgow, Scotland. He spent his formative years immersed in the world of horror, devouring the genre in all its forms. A rabid fan of the underground authors whose work paved the way for a more visceral, hard-hitting style of horror, Kyle's love of extreme gore and boundary-pushing fiction fuelled his imagination and inspired him to forge his own dark path.

  Kyle currently has four works available. Volume 1 and 2 of the 'Consumed' series - a collection of dark fiction that melds extreme horror with the blackest wit - and the full-length love letter to 80's splatter and monster movies, 'Devil's Day'. His second novel, 'Aftertaste', pushed the boundaries of depravity, combining social satire, suspense and a heavy dose of graphic horror.

  In his relatively short career, his works have made him a favourite among readers with a taste for fearless, provocative fiction that evokes the classic works of those who shaped modern horror.

  Among his many influences, he cites Richard Laymon, Edward Lee and Jack Ketchum as the writers who sealed his fate.