Box Set: Scary Stories- Vols. 3 & 4 (Chamber Of Horror Book 8)

by Billy Wells

  “NFL, Elise.” He said still steaming.

  “Sorry.”

  They resumed sitting in silence for a time, still seething from the remarks both had made.

  Elise finally said, “I need to pee really bad. I can’t wait any longer. I've got to go now, but I'm afraid to get out of the car.”

  “Well, you can't piss all over my new seats for Christ sake. Get out and pull your panties down next to the car. I promise not to look.”

  She saw him smile sheepishly, but she had no choice. She had to go. So, she unlocked the car door and stepped into the fog. Leaning against the side of the car, she lowered her panties and relieved herself.

  Suddenly, Elise heard the sound of a crowd of people moaning all around her. She saw the tops of several half-eaten heads bobbing up and down in the swirling mist and scurried back inside the car.

  “Chad! I think I saw zombies in the fog.”

  “You think you saw what? I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing now, but I don't believe in any supernatural bullshit. So, don't waste your time telling me about zombies. There’s no such thing.”

  Suddenly, A hideous face filled the driver’s side window behind Chad. The face of something still moving, but obviously dead. Its gray flesh was pocked, and several earthworms squirmed in the thing's matted disheveled hair. Its nose was a black hole in the middle of its face. One of its eyes hung on a shred of tissue from its cheek.

  Elise screamed and couldn't stop screaming. Chad shook her, trying to make her stop. But she just kept screaming and staring at the hideous face lapping the window glass behind Chad with its black tongue.

  Then another putrefied face with earthworms protruding from several orifices appeared in the passenger side window. Chad recoiled in horror, and finally realizing why Elise was screaming, he started screaming, too. As the deformed face sucked and slobbered across the window, a parade of the dead from a nearby cemetery shambled alongside both sides of the Camaro.

  Suddenly, both car doors were wrenched opened, and fetid, bony hands gripped both of them and dragged them out of the car onto to the ground. A ghoulish, decomposed creature from the wormy depths ripped Elise’s clothes to shreds with superhuman strength while its graveyard friends held her down. Then, it crawled on top of her and began ravaging her. Before she passed out, she saw the salacious leers of the things waiting their turn. Not one of them looked like her knight in shining armor.

  A group of nymphomaniac female corpses with ravenous sexual desires held Chad down on top of a marble slab and taught him a thing or two until he passed out from projectile vomiting.

  * * *

  The next day, the police and a vanload of county personnel came to investigate the aftermath of the meteor that had crashed near Crystal Lake the previous evening.

  The sheriff and his deputy found thirty-one coffins exhumed and overturned along the black path of destruction the meteor had cut through the cemetery. They found the corpses scattered over the hillside and the parking lot bordering the lake. The ME, Andy Mayberry, and his staff had placed the remains in body bags and transported them to the morgue for further analysis.

  Police officers also discovered two incoherent college students lying on the ground next to a brand new cherry red Camaro. Their tongues were shredded, and their vocal chords paralyzed from screaming, but their wallets identified them as Chad “Golden Arm” Magnum and Elise Buxom.

  The initial newspaper article indicated that an undisclosed number of grave robbers had orchestrated the gang rape of both college students by male and female corpses strewn about the area. Every orifice of their bodies teemed with big, thick earthworms commonly found in graves. Both the star football player and his date were effectively brain dead. The trauma they had undergone had reduced them to slobbering, mindless human vegetables, who would be confined to an asylum for the rest of their lives.

  The bizarre incident became the only thing county residents talked about as they waited for the DNA results to explain what had really happened to the two college students who’d become permanent residents of the Morningside Sanitarium.

  Finally Mayberry received the DNA results and he finished what he knew would be the most controversial report he would ever file. He called Barney Walnut, a long time colleague and drinking buddy to review his findings prior to its release.

  They met in the morgue during an autopsy Andy was conducting on a woman whose American Indian husband had skinned her alive. He turned off his microphone when Barney entered the room. Andy went to his desk, picked up the final report, and handed it to his colleague.

  “Can we go into your office,” Barney asked, wincing from the skinless female torso on the metal table.

  “If you can stand it, I need to finish this autopsy. I’m working on a rush for Lieutenant Thursday, who needs the info for a hearing tomorrow morning. I spent forever on the two college students who were gang raped after the meteor crashed, and I’m way behind.”

  Barney started scanning the report, and after reading awhile, he said scratching his head. “You indicate the tomb raiders manually penetrated the woman with fifteen of the male corpses strewn about the graveyard. Andy, how can you even write something that absurd in the report. We both know a stiff, pardon the pun, can’t get it up after being dead for…ahhh…the freshest one had been in the ground more than five years.”

  Mayberry put down his scalpel, just as the woman on the table expelled a pocket of gas noisily. Barney groaned as Andy replied, “There is certainly no precedent I can find in all of medical history for an erect penis after death, but the DNA from the decomposed penile flesh and rotten tissue I found of the corpses in Miss Buxom’s vagina proves it conclusively. There is no doubt they raped her. I even found bloodworm viscera inside her like I found inside of them. Moreover, what other conclusion is there. The grave robbers must have staged the rapes, since the rapists were dead.”

  “What kind of sick perverts would think of doing something so depraved?” Barney’s gaze fell upon the raw exposed flesh of the skinned woman on the table, and he started to wretch. For a moment, Mayberry thought his colleague would upchuck all over his paper-strewn desk.

  “For God’s sake,” Mayberry barked. “Go outside if you’re going to puke.”

  Barney managed to control his involuntary inclination to throw up, and after a brief recovery, he continued, “And what about this…sperm… you found? Does that mean one of the tomb raiders raped the woman in addition to the fifteen corpses?”

  “Can’t you read? It’s all in there. When I discovered the sperm, that's what I thought at first, but the DNA indicates the sperm belongs to the quarterback.“

  “You really found traces of his DNA in nine female corpses scattered around the parking lot?”

  “Absolutely. It was hard to tell his parents what I found, but that’s why I get paid the big bucks.”

  Neither of them could muster a laugh from this remark as Barney continued, “You went out on another limb by suggesting the perpetrators must have mounted nine worm-infested dead women on top of Chad “Golden Arm” Magnum while they held him down.”

  “That’s the only conclusion I can come to, no matter how bizarre it may sound. We found bruises and lacerations on his wrists and ankles. The evidence indicated the corpses themselves held him down. However, since no sane person would believe that, I stated the grave robbers manually orchestrated the women raping him.”

  Why would these perverts go to all the trouble to have fifteen different male corpses gang rape the woman and nine different female corpses gang rape the man? And how could they do it without leaving behind a trace of their own DNA?”

  “They had to be wearing HAZMAT suits or some kind of insulated uniforms not to leave DNA.”

  “That’s crazy, Andy, and you know it.”

  “What other conclusion is there other than there were no grave robbers, and the corpses themselves raped the students.”

  “And you can’t put that in your report wi
thout being committed to the nut house,” Barney said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  Mayberry shook his head. He’d been working around the clock for days and he smelled almost as bad as the skinned corpse in front of him. “I doubt we’ll ever find the supposed perverts who did this because in my opinion, they don’t exist. I believe the meteor brought the dead back to life, and instead of eating their victims like in the movies, they were hungry for sex with the first humans they came upon.”

  “That really is a more plausible scenario that the bullshit you wrote, but you can’t suggest the dead came back alive.” Barney closed the file and placed it on the desk. “Well, I guess the sperm means the quarterback and the coed had sex before they were both reduced to vegetables in the final attack.”

  Mayberry shook his head and replied, “I can't explain it, and I won't even try, but the evidence shows Chad “Golden Arm” Magnum as the last one to have sex with her.”

  “Last? Come on, Andy. Someone must have contaminated the crime scene. I know Chad had a reputation as a ladies man, but how could he get it up with her after fifteen decomposing corpses had brutalized her before him, and he’d been gang raped by nine horny female corpses?”

  “It couldn’t have been much fun because she was all ripped apart inside, but I checked it three times, Barney. You've heard of sloppy seconds and thirds. The quarterback was sloppy sixteen, and I do mean sloppy.”

  Together, they puked all over the skinned corpse on the table, Mayberry’s final report, and his paper-strewn desk.

  YOU REMEMBER, I’ll FORGET

  Frank James couldn’t get his mind around not seeing bars on the windows when he emerged from a taxi in front of the house where he lived as a little boy. A tear rolled down his face as he saw the dilapidated jungle gym in the side yard. The seat on one of the swings had come loose and dangled on the ground.

  He had done terrible things when he lived here. Gruesome acts so unspeakable for someone his age, his lawyer claimed he was not responsible for his actions due to a mental handicap. He wondered if his counsel had really believed he had a psychiatric illness when he entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and eventually won the case. Now after twenty years of rehabilitation at the Sanitarium in Rock Falls, he was found competent by a Psychiatric Security Review Board and released.

  He remembered bits and pieces of memories when he was a little boy, playing with the children who lived close by. He remembered their names and faces like it were yesterday, along with glimpses of happy and not so happy times before they disappeared.

  He remembered Barbara, who came over almost every day to play with him when they attended Woodlawn Elementary. They walked to school together. Then one Monday morning she didn’t meet him on the corner, and he never saw her again. He recalled the nice police officer, who’d asked him questions like the ones they ask on crime shows on TV. For weeks afterward, he saw posters of Barbara on telephone poles and trees. Under her picture, it read: “$10,000 Reward” in big letters for information leading to her recovery. No one ever collected the reward, because no one ever knew what happened to Barbara.

  He remembered Skipper, who became his next best friend after Barbara. The two of them collected baseball cards. Skipper had a very hard-to-get card of Mickey Mantle that none of the other kids had. Was he mad when his valuable card turned up missing? Skipper had punched him in the stomach and accused him of taking it. That was the last time Skipper had come to play at his house. Like Barbara, he disappeared not long after, and no one in the neighborhood ever saw him again.

  So many faces woven in memory from the dark past.

  Larry Donahue had brought his arms up blocking him when they played touch football and almost caused Frank to bite off his tongue. Larry had thought this was hilarious.

  John Hubble had hit him in the face with a dodge ball and broke his nose. He remembered Hubble laughing so hard he couldn't stop.

  Cheryl Pearson loved to make paper dolls when she came over to play. She had a dollhouse they played with for hours. He’d shown her his penis, and she’d shown him her twat, but they never told anyone about it.

  So many poignant memories with thirteen childhood friends, who disappeared because he killed them. Thankfully, the treatments he’d received from the doctors at Rock Falls had effectively erased all memory of the torture and cold-blooded death he’d inflicted upon them.

  After the police arrested him, they said he’d told them the location of his secret cave where he’d committed the depraved acts and buried them.

  During the extensive interrogations, Frank remembered spending countless hours with the detectives answering questions. He knew it had to be about what he’d done to the eight bodies they found in a deep hole inside the cave. He remembered the cave and could visualize it in his mind, but now, after the passage of time and the rehab, he was reluctant to dig deeper into the horror that lay dormant for so long.

  He’d lived with his grandma in a split-level at the very end of the street that had a large patio on the lower level at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. He’d seen newspaper clippings about how he lured the last five children into the recreation room on the lower level and bludgeoned them into unconsciousness with a crowbar. After he tortured them until they died, he chopped them up, placed the pieces in heavy-duty garbage bags, and pitched them over the side of the patio retaining wall into the ocean.

  The police had also mentioned that none of the other houses on his street had a view of the patio and the precipitous sheer cliff. It was the perfect place to commit murder. The waves crashing into the rocks did not allow the authorities to search along the coastline without sinking their boats on the reef.

  Frank didn't know why the garbage bags never surfaced, but he was too young to worry about the technicalities. He only knew he’d never seen a trace of one on the beach.

  Sometimes when the wind blew in from the ocean, he thought he detected a ripe stench. It may have come from some of the rotting corpses, but he never really knew what caused the smell. Maybe a bag or two may have broken open if they snagged on one of the jagged rocks, but his grandma never mentioned the stench and neither did he.

  Frank couldn't believe he had murdered so many children over so many years and never been caught or even suspected. He guessed the authorities couldn’t imagine someone so young as a serial killer. Their search always included perverts who had a record of molesting children and those with a prison record.

  The detectives said he probably could’ve killed a lot more children if he had stuck to throwing the bodies into the ocean quickly rather than prolonging their lives to torture them for several days. During the interrogations, Frank had indicated his grandmother was almost deaf, and since she was confined to a bed and her wheelchair on the first level, she never went downstairs during his murder spree. He also confessed he had removed the children’s tongues and gagged them with duct tape to be sure his granny couldn’t hear them screaming.

  He didn’t remember it, but the detectives told him his last victim, Sue Rider, knew she was going to die if she didn't do something drastic. So, she broke her wrist to escape her bonds and fled through the sliding doors on to the patio while Frank was taking a nap. She ran to the next-door neighbors’ house, and they called the police.

  He’d been sixteen when they’d taken him away. He would be thirty-seven next month. After a lobotomy, numerous shock treatments, and many strong narcotics, Frank had not displayed any homicidal tendencies for more than ten years, and he was ready to make a new start.

  His doctors and the Board were convinced their rehabilitation program had cured Frank completely. He was no longer the stone cold killer he had once been. On the other hand, exhaustive tests indicated he was more on the timid side in terms of retribution, retaliation, and violence than the average person. He never exhibited a hint of rage no matter what disappointments came his way. In essence, he had become almost saint like.

  His overpowering penchant to tortu
re his victims for hours had been replaced with stamp collecting. Shit-kicking country music had replaced his love of listening to his victims scream for mercy that had once been music to his ears.

  As he approached the steps leading to the porch of the house he’d inherited, he saw an enormous black spider crawling along the edge of the sidewalk. The arachnid paused when it detected his movement. Frank could've stepped on the spider, but he had no desire to hurt any living thing. His fetishes, his perversions, his bloodlust were all part of his forgotten past.

  Frank was born again. He had found Jesus and would give a stranger the shirt off his back if he were in need. He couldn't wait to meet his neighbors to show them his kindness and generosity. It was late afternoon, and he had decided to start fresh the next morning. He unlocked the front door and stepped inside.

  As he stood in the living room, a sense of déjà vu swept over him. He saw the Winter piano on the far wall. His grandmother had taught him how to play chopsticks and Clair de Lune on it so long ago.

  The Lord must have been looking out for him because his grandma had died and left him her house only a month before his scheduled release from the mental institution.

  The furniture in the living room, if he remembered correctly, remained in the exact location as the day the authorities had taken him away. They just weren't the same color as before.

  He entered the kitchen, sat at the corner table, and ate the turkey sandwich he’d bought at the deli on the way home. Afterward, he went to bed. He wanted to get an early start in the morning.

  As he mentally prepared to become a participating, upstanding member of the community, he felt a pang of unease as the shadow of the branches outside moved across the wall in front of his bed. He thought the boogeyman lived in his closet when he was eight years old. That's why he hadn't unpacked and hung his clothes on the hangers inside it earlier. He would check the closet tomorrow for the boogeyman after the sun came up.