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

by Billy Wells

  “That doesn't explain why you lock it.”

  He didn't respond to that, since he didn’t want to say he was masturbating a lot when the door was closed.

  “You're not into drugs are you?” his dad asked, pushing back the disheveled hair on his head nervously. “I hear there's a lot of that going on at your school these days.”

  “No, Dad. You're not giving me enough allowance for that, I assure you.” Larry cringed, not knowing why he made such a stupid remark.

  “What? You mean you're hanging around with hoodlums who use drugs.”

  “Do you consider Donnie, Bruce, Ed and Charlie hoodlums? They're the only ones I run around with.”

  “I doubt they’ll be hanging around with you any more after today.”

  “Have you been smoking cigarettes?” his mom said, looking at him suspiciously. “Your T-shirt smelled smoky when I washed it the other day.”

  “I made a mistake. I misjudged the distance I threw a rock. That's all. I haven't turned into a juvenile delinquent since I had breakfast this morning.”

  His parents looked at each other with worry etched into their faces as they thought about what their son had said.

  The next day, Larry found out Donnie had lost his eye, and his parents were suing his parents. If they lost the case, his mom and dad could lose everything.

  From that day forward, all of Larry’s classmates he’d been close to at school avoided him. They walked the other way when they saw him coming.

  Not long after, he failed a routine inspection of his locker. Someone had planted three marijuana cigarettes wrapped in a plastic bag in his tennis shoe. How they got the combination was a complete mystery.

  He also noticed his teachers seemed more distant than before. The grades they gave him were much lower than they had been before the incident.

  * * *

  Years passed, and Larry was happy to leave the middle school. He hoped he would make new friends at Mount Vernon High.

  Unfortunately, no matter what he did, he couldn’t make any new friends even at the new school. It seemed everyone knew he was the screwball who put his friend’s eye out.

  On the day he became sixteen, one of his neighbor's dogs was found mutilated in the woods. He was the first teenager Officer Forbes questioned after it happened.

  “Larry, someone we interviewed saw you on Easy Street the day Stinky disappeared.” Forbes said in an accusatory tone.

  “Who told you that?” Larry barked defensively.

  “I'm afraid the identity of the person is confidential. I’ll repeat the question. Were you on Easy Street last Thursday?

  “I'm on Easy street every day. I have to go down it on my way to and from school just like every other teen who lives on Dipper Lane.”

  “So you were on that street last Thursday?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Did you see Stinky?”

  “I see him from time to time, but I don't keep track of exactly when. Who would?”

  “When was the last time you remember seeing him?”

  “Sometime last week, I think.”

  “Did you notice anyone suspicious hanging around the neighborhood lately?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Do you know anyone who likes to hurt animals? Have you ever seen one of your friends mistreat an animal?”

  “No. Never. I wouldn’t hang around with sick fucks who would do that.”

  “Are you aware there's been a series of mutilations, all leading to the animal’s death over the last six months?”

  “No. I've never heard anyone mention such a thing. I can't imagine any of my friends doing anything so terrible. Oh, pardon me. I forgot. I don't have any friends anymore. They all avoid me like the plague.”

  “No one ever believed you didn't throw that rock at Donnie on purpose, did they?”

  “I guess not, but they're wrong. I never meant to hurt him, and that’s the truth.”

  “Someone said they saw Donnie throwing a burlap sack off the bridge into the river a few weeks ago. They heard cats screeching when the bag hit the water. Apparently, animals were trapped inside the bag and drowned. Do you think Donnie could do that?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “When did you talk with him last?”

  It saddened Larry to answer this question. “Not since the incident.”

  “You haven't spoken with him for five years?”

  “I guess it's been that long.”

  “Are you aware Donnie has changed?”

  “No. We never talk, and none of our old friends speak to me. What do you mean he's changed?”

  “I’d better shut my trap,” Forbes said reconsidering his remark. “I thought you probably knew about it. You used to be his best friend.”

  “That's right. Used to be.”

  After the Lieutenant Forbes left, Larry called the only friend he’d made at the high school so far, Jason Kim, and asked about Donnie.

  “You don't know?” Jason asked.

  “Know what? Except for you, I'm an outcast. Nobody tells me anything.”

  “After Donnie lost his eye, he's been in and out of trouble ever since. Have you seen him lately?”

  “Now that you mention it, no. I never see him at school anymore.”

  “That's because he dropped out over a year ago.”

  “Dropped out? That's impossible, he was always at the top of the class.”

  “Not anymore. The kids made fun of him after he got his false eye. He had trouble with it at first, and the kids crucified him. He's a Goth now, and he wears a black patch over his eye. He has tattoos and piercings all over his body. When he takes his shirt off at the town pool, he looks reptilian. All the tat choices he made alienated him further. He's a freak who does odd jobs if he can find anyone stupid enough to hire him.”

  “I can't believe this. I thought throwing that rock ruined my life, not his. My parents lost their house, and now they live in a shitty apartment on the wrong side of town. We're not on speaking terms anymore. They believe I’m responsible for everything that happened. And the worst part is, they're right. Where did you say Donnie lives?”

  “In Shantytown. I think he lives in an old derelict car close to the dump. You're not thinking of going for a visit are you?”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  Larry didn’t tell Jason, but if Donnie were a homeless person, he would have to put him on his list and waste him at some point. He hated smelly derelicts with a passion, and he was the Lord’s messenger to exterminate them.

  “Don't do it,” Jason said. “He's not the person you used to know. He may try to hurt you, even kill you when he sees you. I hear he's one step out of the psych ward.”

  “I don’t know if you heard about it, but Forbes told me someone saw him drowning a bag full of cats down by the river not long ago.”

  “I wouldn't put it past him. He’s really fucked up.”

  Larry remembered Donnie hated cats, and he did some demented things to them even before he’d thrown the rock. Larry knew about it, but didn’t squeal on him to Forbes.

  “There are a lot of strange things going on around town the last year or so.”

  “Like what?”

  “Don't you read the paper?”

  “Of course not, Jason. Nobody reads the paper anymore. They surf the net.”

  “When you do that, you don't get any local news. And when you're out of touch, someone can come up behind you and bite you in the ass.”

  “Hey, my ass is fine so far. What's been happening?”

  “Several young women have been brutally murdered. More animals than usual have been mutilated and hung on fence posts. Quite a few children have gone missing lately, and the homeless population down on Carmine Street is half of what it used to be. There's no proof these events are linked, but Mutthead told me the Captain at the police station believes we have a serial killer on the loose in River City.”

  “And you think Donnie might be the seria
l killer?”

  “I don't know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He certainly would be a person of interest.”

  “Maybe I'll stop and see him for old times sake,” Larry said. He would take his switchblade with him.

  “What the fuck for? You wouldn't even recognize him if you saw him on the street. He looks more like a snake than a human being. His whole body is covered with black scale tattoos. He's not Donnie anymore; he’s Cobra man. He had plastic surgery on his tongue so it protrudes from his mouth like a serpent. His head is even shaped like a cobra. The only one who would hire him now after his last tattoo session is some freak show or a traveling carnival.”

  “I wonder where he got the money to make himself look like a snake.” Larry said suspiciously. “Plastic surgery is very expensive.”

  “That's a good question. Maybe he took it off the people he killed that disappeared. He hasn't had a job for years as far as I know, and you want to bury the hatchet and talk about old times?”

  As Larry walked away to return to his shitty apartment to get his knife, he chuckled to himself that Jason had gotten that last statement half right but didn’t know it. Maybe he should bring his hatchet along just in case. What Jason never suspected and neither did Forbes was after he’d thrown the rock, he’d became an honest to god serial killer himself who preyed on prostitutes and homeless people.

  When he was down and out without a friend in the world, he’d found Jesus. Now he was an avenging angel doing God’s work by ridding his perfect world of undesirables.

  But, on the other hand, Donnie had gone completely wacko if he abducted children and mutilated animals. What a sick fuck. Larry felt the anger building as his desire to cleanse the neighborhood of the vermin like Donnie that walked the streets of carnal sin and sloth.

  Children and animals. He obsessed. How low could his old buddy go? No one he knew could give a shit about whores and pathetic derelicts. But children and animals. That was really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

  If the police couldn't take Donnie down, he would have to take the law into his own hands. He remembered how much the two of them enjoyed the Death Wish movies with Charles Bronson when they were best buddies. If everybody still loved vigilante justice as much as they did in the eighties, he might become the town hero if he wasted Donnie. His reputation could be restored entirely if he could only expose his secret identity. But he would get the needle if he did that so he couldn’t take a chance.

  Maybe he should buy some fabric from Michaels and make a superhero uniform. What could he call himself? The Masked Avenger? The Pervert Eradicator? None of these titles had the right ring. They weren't good enough. Damn that Stan Lee. He'd scarfed up all the good superhero names. Curses. Larry couldn’t think of a single good one now, but he would eventually.

  After all, it would be his duty as an upstanding American and local hero to stop that fucking Donnie Flag.

  THE RIPPER

  It was Halloween, and it was getting dark. Gomer was excited about seeing the trick-or-treaters. He’d bought four bags of candy for the children, who usually came with their parents just before dark. His house was the last one on the street, and he worried every year the parents may not come all the way to the end.

  He was barely making it with his meager retirement checks, and his house looked more and more shabby as the years went by from lack of maintenance. Also, the two houses on both sides of the street closest to his house were vacant. Without the lights in these adjoining houses, his location on Shady Lane was eerily dark and foreboding. To make matters worse, the light on the pole across the street had burned out the day before, and no one had come to repair it.

  Oh, well. What could he do but hope for the best?

  After buying the candy, he’d spent his last dime on an antiquated, Ninja Turtle mask with a hole in the cheek. He preferred a scary mask but never got one because he feared it would frighten the children. He would have to go hungry for a few days because of the Halloween purchase, but it would be worth it if he could see the happy children in their gruesome little costumes.

  He hoped the terrible Ramos brothers would not interfere with his plans for a wonderful evening. These hoodlums were much too old to beg for candy now, but they always seemed to come around to harass him at the worst times.

  Gomer sat on his front porch, bubbling over with anticipation. He saw the parades of parents and children passing down the block. He kept watching them come and go as close as two doors up from his, but sadly, none of them came to his house at the end of the street.

  Two hours passed without one trick-or-treater darkening his doorstep. When Gomer looked at his watch and saw it was 8 p.m., he knew his plans for a good time had passed. What was worse, he feared the parents would never bring their children to his house ever again. Shady Lane was just too dark and spooky.

  He found ten peanuts in a jar in the cupboard, and since it was all he had to eat, he placed each one in this mouth and sucked all the nourishment from each morsel before he chewed and swallowed it. One of his front teeth was loose, and he feared he would soon be meeting the public with a tooth missing. He certainly had no money for dental work.

  When he rose from his dilapidated chair to go inside the house, he noticed a light flickering in the middle of the street and decided to investigate.

  On the other side of the deserted house, someone had placed an oil lantern and a platform constructed from plywood with a dead cat dangling from it. A sign hung from a nail that read: Happy Halloween Come To My House, Kiddies. I Have Something For You That Will Be Yummy. Gomer. The Last House At The End Of The Street.”

  “Those bastards,” he growled. Now he understood all too well, why no children had come to his house. The Ramos brothers had struck again and deprived him of the one night of enjoyment he looked forward to all year.

  He ripped the sign from the nail, extinguished the light, and took the things back to his house for collection by the garbage man the next morning.

  Gomer was going on eighty-five years old and did not want to have a confrontation with these hoodlums. Rumor had it they were in a notorious gang that could only spell more trouble if he sought revenge. When they were younger, they had dented his mailbox with a baseball bat, toilet papered his trees and bushes, and hurled rotten eggs at the side of his house several different times, but he had never caught them doing it even once. He had no idea why they enjoyed picking on him. He’d never done anything to them to cause the habitual harassment.

  This latest prank was the most insidious yet and had hurt him much more than the others. He wondered what these losers, who’d been kicked out of the local high school years ago and were still sponging off with their parents, would think of next to harass him. He could no longer ignore it. When he received his next social security check, he would buy a box of ammo for his shotgun. The next time they picked on him, regardless of the consequences, he would blow them to kingdom come or die trying. He wouldn’t take it anymore.

  The next day, he answered a knock on his front door. Two men in suits stood eyeballing him after he opened it.

  “What can I do for you, fellas?” Gomer asked politely.

  The two men simultaneously withdrew their IDs from their inside suit pockets and showed them to him. The taller man said, “I'm Special Agent Fogarty, and this is my partner, Agent Kojak. We are investigating a series of malicious Halloween pranks that occurred this past evening. Some pervert inserted razor blades, slivers of glass, and tacks in candy given to the neighborhood children last night. Several of the victims are in critical condition due to internal bleeding.”

  “That's terrible,” Gomer said, visibly distraught at the horror of such a monstrous act. “I can't imagine what type of person could do such a thing. I haven't heard of this type of mischief happening for quite a few years.” His face creased as if a sudden painful memory had crept into his thoughts, but he quickly dismissed it and said nothing.

  Both agents noticed the sudden change in his expr
ession from sadness and horror to a guilty recollection, but they let it slide for the time being.

  “Did you have many trick-or-treaters last night, Mr. ...Ominous?”

  Gomer didn’t like the accusatory tone of this question, and before he could answer. Kojak added, “I imagine you didn’t have many after you put the sign in the street with the dead cat. Were you trying to avoid handing out candy?”

  “Actually, some of the local hoodlums put that sign in the street and scared away all the children, who might have come to my house. I wanted to hand out candy, and I spent a lot of my monthly social security check to have an ample supply on hand. I even bought a mask for the occasion, which I look forward to every year. Those miserable gangbangers ruined it for me, and I hope they rot in hell for their cruelty.”

  “So, you didn't hand out any candy?” Fogarty asked as his partner wrote something in his notepad.

  “Not a single piece. I didn't even open one bag. It's all going to waste. It probably won't be any good next year.”

  Gomer saw the continued skepticism in their demeanor as they looked at the rotting planks on his front porch.

  “Do I detect an insinuation in your tone?” Gomer said sternly.

  “Not really. We're going door to door asking all the neighbors if they saw or heard anything suspicious, and several mentioned your scary sign,” Fogarty explained.

  “They said the dead cat was extremely upsetting to the children,” Kojak added.

  “As I said, it wasn't my sign, and I didn’t put a dead cat in the street to frighten the children. I wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  “You certainly have a peculiar name, Mr. Ominous,” Fogarty replied.

  “I didn't choose the name either. My parents gave it to me,” Gomer said flatly.

  “You say you know who put the sign in the street?” Fogarty continued.

  “Of course, I do. The same lowlife’s who threw rotten eggs at my house, battered my mailbox, and papered my bushes and trees.”