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

by Billy Wells

  “I don’t know. It’s confusing. I only know what I’ve seen in the movies. Who knows what happens in real life?” Rafferty replied. “This is all supposed to be bullshit anyway, only legend and folklore. If I had to choose between a wooden stake and my Smith and Wesson 44 Magnum, I’d let my gun do the talking every time.”

  “You heard what Montague said. And since we’re traveling in unchartered territory, I'd take both along to be sure. You don't want to come up empty-handed.”

  * * *

  On February 15, Rafferty and Ripley pulled into a parking space that had an unobstructed view of Mrs. Montague's house. Rafferty opened the glove box and took out his night vision glasses.

  Ripley said, looking at the sky, “You don't need them yet. It’s another forty-five minutes until dark, and the perp never strikes until much later.”

  “The early bird gets the worm,” Rafferty said.

  “Watcha got in the bag?”

  “Oh, just a few things. I want to be prepared.”

  Ripley reached into the backseat, lifted the sack, and looked inside. “Hmmm…a mallet, a wooden stake, a crucifix, and two grenades. I thought we were looking for a psychopath who believes he's a vampire.”

  “We are, but just in case, I want to be prepared for whatever comes down.”

  “That woman really rattled you, didn't she?”

  “She made my skin crawl. She’s evil. There's no doubt about it,” Rafferty said, inspecting his revolver.

  After the sun disappeared below the horizon, the only sound was their own breathing. Both men watched the house and the yard surrounding it. They saw a single light on the first floor. They both wore night vision glasses as the hours passed, which was extremely tedious.

  At ten o'clock, Ripley said, “Did you see that?”

  “I saw something, but it went by so fast, I'm not sure what it was. It wasn't very tall. It might've been some kind of dog. It ran across the backyard into the bushes like an animal. I don't think it was Montague. It didn't look like a person.”

  “What should we do? Should we check on her?”

  “No one called in a murder yet. We're not dogcatchers. We're vampire hunters,” Rafferty said, not cracking a smile.

  “Remember, in some movies, vampires turn into wolves. Maybe that’s what it was.”

  “Let’s not creep ourselves out, Sid. Let's sit tight a little while longer.”

  At eleven o'clock, they saw something emerge from the bushes, run across the lawn, and disappear behind the house.

  “There it was again! Whatever we saw the first time,” Ripley said. “It went the opposite direction this time.”

  “Maybe back into the house through the back door.”

  “That's the way it looked all right. Maybe she already drained some poor woman of her blood, and now she’s back inside all fat and happy.”

  Rafferty grabbed his phone and called headquarters. “Anything going down on the vampire killer, Marcus? If she follows her pattern, she's supposed to kill somebody tonight.” He listened to the reply and answered, “We now believe it's a woman.” He listened and continued, “Yeah. We're outside her house right now. We saw something run like a bat out of hell across the backyard, but it looked like an animal, not a person.”

  He listened. Ripley kept watching the house and the yard.

  “Yeah. I know sometimes they turn into wolves. Thanks for the tip.” Rafferty rolled his eyes. “Call me ASAP if the killer strikes again.”

  Rafferty turned to Ripley, "Nothing so far, but they might not find a body for a day or two even if she did kill someone tonight.”

  “I hate this waiting.”

  “I'm going to check on her,” Rafferty said taking the wooden stake and the mallet from the bag.

  “It's past eleven.”

  “I don't give a shit. Keep your eyes peeled. I won't be long.”

  Rafferty went to the house and knocked on the front door. He heard someone moving inside and called out, “Mrs. Montague. This is Detective Rafferty. We think the killer may strike sometime tonight, and I wanted to check to see if you're okay.”

  He heard her whispery voice just beyond the door, “Or did you just stop by to see if I'm lurking about in the dark looking for warm blood?”

  Damn this psycho bitch. He didn't know what to say to this.

  “Cat got your tongue, Detective Rafferty?”

  “Open the door, Mrs. Montague, please. We need to talk. Someone ran across the back yard. They may already be inside the house.”

  “I’m afraid I'm not decent now,” she said letting the words roll off her tongue with a sultry tone any real man could understand. “You'll have to wait a few minutes while I put something on.”

  Rafferty felt a strange sensation of fear and lust sweep over him. He fingered his revolver with his right hand and gripped the wooden stake with his left as his erection swelled.

  “Fuck!” he spat, bewildered at the potpourri of feelings that rampaged inside of him. Somehow, this woman had sensed she had gotten to him when he'd spoken with her before. He didn't understand why, because he hadn't realized it himself until only moments ago.

  The front door creaked open. He saw only darkness within.

  “Mrs. Montague?” he asked hoarsely.

  There was only the silence and the dark beyond the door.

  He stood there, trying to get his shit together. He didn't know what he wanted to take inside, his revolver, his wooden stake, or his rock hard dick. He decided to take all three.

  “Mrs. Montague?” Rafferty called out. His phone rang, and he returned the stake inside his pocket and answered it.

  “Why are you just standing there, partner?” Ripley asked bewildered by Rafferty’s peculiar lack of follow-through. “Is she in there?”

  “Yeah, she's in there, but she said she wasn't dressed and had to put on some clothes to let me in. Keep your eyes open. She might be up to something.”

  “I got a call from Marcus. They found another body on the pier at Crystal Lake.”

  Rafferty heard an odd sound along with Ripley's voice on the line.

  “What's that sound, Sid?”

  “You're not going to believe this, Partner. A giant bat is flapping its wings outside the passenger side window.”

  “Stay put. Don’t get out of the car.” Rafferty shouted, turning back to the Crown Vic. He heard the car door open and Ripley say, "What are you doing out here? It's almost midnight.”

  Then Rafferty heard the phone clattering to the ground, followed by a muffled scream, and three quick gunshots. Now the driver’s door was completely open, the interior dome light was on, but he didn’t see his partner.

  Rafferty ran towards the car shouting, “Ripley! Are you okay?”

  There was no answer.

  As he approached the car with his gun drawn and a wooden stake in his belt, his foot stumbled over something on the pavement. He withdrew a Maglite and shone it on the body of his partner, spread-eagled on his back. Ripley had two jagged puncture wounds in his throat and a horrible shock of terror on his face. Rafferty couldn't believe it. Ripley was dead. His gun lay alongside his body on the sidewalk.

  He heard Montague’s sultry voice, “You’re a miserable vampire hunter. You wouldn’t last one night in Romania. Guns are no good against a vampire.”

  Rafferty turned in uncontrolled fury, and lifting his revolver, fired five rapid shots into Montague's body before she hit the ground. The left side of her head was obliterated, and blood spewed from four gaping holes spread among her ample breasts. “Looks to me like my 44 Magnum did a pretty good job on you, bitch. But why take a chance.” He extracted his wooden stake and using the butt of his gun hammered it into Montague’s heart with all the gusto he could muster.

  Then, Rafferty heard the tinny shriek of a young boy behind him, “You killed my mother!” The detective turned to see a hideous, diminutive, pale-faced monster with long spidery claws and four protruding incisors dripping blood. Rafferty fired his last
shot into Nigel's chest as the boy leaped upon him and gripped his throat with superhuman strength. The brat from hell sunk his teeth into Rafferty’s jugular and began sucking his life away.

  The last thing the detective saw was the hole in the boy's chest magically healing itself as the wooden stake slipped through his fingers and fell with a thud to the pavement.

  Rafferty hoped Sid was right about ghosts being real so he and Ripley could haunt this fucking vampire dwarf for all eternity.

  BUG

  Dr. Osgood Peabody had been a biology professor for thirty years at Stodgy University when it happened. Trixie Montpelier, a young, extremely sexy student, remained after class, closed the door when they were alone, and locked it. She boldly swiveled up to his desk, and pushing her ample breasts in his face, she cooed, “I notice you’ve been admiring my body the whole semester. You don’t need to deny it. It’s okay. My daddy paid a lot of money for my boob job to make me happy.”

  Before Peabody could react from the shock, she pushed his chair back from the desk, flopped on his knee, and grabbed him between the legs. “This is your lucky day, Prof. Let’s go to my condo, and I’ll do things to you, you never even imagined. Some positions may even defy the laws of physics. All you have to do is give me an A in your extremely boring class. No one will be the wiser, and we’ll both get what we want.”

  “Get off me this instant. I can’t believe you think a man in my position would stoop to such a thing. Not only will I dismiss you from the class, I’ll take immediate disciplinary action against you.”

  After standing for a shocked moment in utter amazement she’d been rebuffed, Trixie ripped open the professor’s shirt and scratched him across the chest with her sharp, pink fingernails. “Now Dr. Peabody. What will it be? Give me an A in the class, or I will report you to Dean Uptite for soliciting sex from one of your students.”

  “I'll have you know, I have been an upstanding member of the university staff for more than thirty years, Miss Montpelier. No matter what lurid story you concoct; none of my colleagues on the board will give your accusation the slightest credence. Not only will I ignore your threat, I will report your flagrant attempt at bribery to the dean myself. Hopefully you will no longer be concerned about an A in my class, you will be dismissed from the university immediately.”

  To his utter dismay, the voluptuous trollop brazenly threw her arms around his neck and planted the most sensuous kiss on his lips he’d ever had and said, "We'll see, Prof, if my daddy's enormous contributions to Stodgy U. will have any bearing on the board's decision. I fear it’s you who will be leaving this staid, stuffy establishment, not me.”

  Peabody winced when she stormed out and slammed the door behind her.

  He picked up the phone and called Dean Uptite, his closest colleague since he began teaching at Stodgy in 1984. After listening to the lurid account, the dean said, “Don't worry, Osgood. Everyone on the board has known you for years. Your reputation is beyond reproach, and you are one of our finest educators. I can assure you no matter how much Fauntleroy Montpelier’s endowment to the university may be, there is not enough money in the world to make us compromise our decision in this matter.”

  “It’s good to hear you say that,” Osgood said, overwhelmed with gratitude. “I know the university is always under the gun to maximize the alumni’s annual contributions, and Montpelier is certainly one of the biggest contributors.”

  “Don’t worry, dear friend,” Uptite reassured him. “The board would never allow any conduct that undermines the reputation of our faculty and the hallowed name of Stodgy University. Miss Montpelier will be out on her ear by tomorrow afternoon, I promise you.”

  The next day, Peabody received a call to come to the dean's office. He was overjoyed the board had reached a decision so quickly. He longed to get the matter behind him.

  When he arrived at the administration building, the dean’s assistant, Evelyn, escorted him into the first conference room.

  When he entered, he was surprised to find the dean and the four most prestigious members of the board, Maximilian Fiasco, Archibald Bromfield, Dudley Grandeur, and Cornelius Hardmeat, seated with grim faces on the opposite side of the conference table.

  “Please have a seat, Osgood,” the dean said sternly.

  Peabody seated himself across from the board members with his mouth agape in bewilderment.

  The dean began, “We have called you here today to present our findings in regard to the accusation brought against you by Trixie Montpelier.”

  “I never expected the board to meet on such a ridiculous matter of a student's attempt to bribe me into giving a grade she didn't deserve,” Peabody said curtly.

  “Unfortunately, we will have to ask you to remove your tie and unbutton your shirt. Miss Montpelier claims she scratched you in the heat of passion during one of your recent nocturnal trysts.”

  “One of my nocturnal trysts? I assure you I have never set foot out of the classroom with Miss Montpelier. As I indicated in my telephone conversation right after the episode, she ripped open my shirt and purposely scratched me to corroborate her story. Surely you are not taking her word against mine.”

  “I'm sorry, Osgood. Fauntleroy Montpelier, Trixie's father, is a substantial contributor to the university endowment fund each year. Not only is he threatening to discontinue his generous gift, he has indicated he will press charges against you and sue the university for your flagrant misconduct.”

  “My misconduct? How dare you accuse me of such a preposterous act after all my years of service to the university.”

  “I'm sorry Osgood, if you won't remove your shirt, I'm afraid we will consider that an admission of guilt and be forced to take serious action against you.”

  Peabody looked at his old friend, the dean, and each member of the board, who had all been his friends for so many years, like the strangers they had turned out to be. He had never felt such unmitigated hatred for human beings in his life as he felt now.

  With a tear in his eye and the bitter taste of betrayal on his tongue, he said boldly, “So Montpelier‘s contributions are all you care about. This meeting is a farce and you know it. I have already been found guilty without a trial. Removing my shirt and tie has nothing to do with the outcome; you've already made up your minds.”

  The members’ faces reddened and no one spoke as Peabody glared at them, then continued, “I’m sure you realize if you do this, I'll never be able to teach again. You really should have brought your daggers with you so you could stab me in the heart and put me out of my misery.”

  None of the board members looked Peabody in the eye. Finally, the dean said to finalize the painful nature of the proceedings, “I'm sorry, Osgood, we have no alternative but to terminate you effective immediately. I have directed Lefty, I mean Mr. Mop to have your personal items delivered to your home.”

  “I can only hope that each one of you miserable assholes will rot in hell for your despicable act against me.”

  “Is that a threat?” the dean asked indignantly.

  “Fuck all of you!” Peabody said, turning and leaving the room.

  As he drove from the campus for the last time on his way out of town, he saw Trixie Montpelier standing with several of her classmates. She smiled broadly when she saw him passing and flipped him the bird as he went by. He felt the overpowering urge to swerve his Toyota into her and crush the life out of her, but he simply gritted his teeth and kept driving.

  Peabody seethed with insane fury, hell-bent for revenge, as he headed home. His contorted face and bared teeth looked more like a savage from the African bush than the mild-mannered, turn-the-other cheek educator everyone thought they knew at Stodgy U. The professor had a dark side behind his horn-rimmed glasses and nerdy bowtie. Unknowingly, the board of sanctimonious assholes had unleashed a merciless psychopath into their community that up until now had remained dormant.

  As a biology professor, Peabody had always had a peculiar and unwholesome interest in inse
cts. He was so fascinated with certain predatory specimens; he had six of the most deadly on the planet in his home lab.

  In order to enjoy witnessing what his favorite insects could do, he converted his basement into a laboratory soon after he accepted his position at Stodgy. He’d been conducting appalling experiments there all along. His basement had an outside stairway in the back of the house where he could unload test subjects without anyone seeing.

  He loved to find a stray cat or dog milling about the town dump so he could lure it into his car with a piece of raw meat or tuna. Once inside, he would inject the animal with propofol, which would put it asleep in seconds. While the stray was unconscious, he transported it to his laboratory and placed it in one of his controlled enclosures. Once the animal regained consciousness, he nuked some popcorn in the microwave, poured a glass of Pepsi, and watched the voracious insects he’d chosen this time attack it.

  His favorite experiment was watching his deadly army ants swarm over a living thing and devour it completely. He’d simply open a small door to allow a colony of them to feast while he enjoyed his evening snack. The thrill Peabody got from watching the ants strip every limb of the animal to the bone was almost orgasmic.

  When the deed was completed, which usually took only a half an hour, he sprayed a whiff of something like ant catnip into the anthill inside the container, and the ants returned to their original nesting place.

  Unfortunately, the neighbors began to complain about the caterwauling the animals made in the throes of agony at all hours of the night. The last time, they called the police and Peabody’s explanations barely satisfied the persistent cop. Consequently, Osgood had to rent a secluded cabin to conduct his experiments. The old codger, who owned the property, was happy to take cash and not ask questions to avoid paying taxes on the income. This had turned out to be a godsend. Now, the cabin was the perfect place to take his experiments to a higher level.

  Since he wouldn’t be experimenting on animals this time, he had to make significant changes to the lab. It took a week for Peabody to construct an enclosure big enough and strong enough to accommodate someone as big as Cornelius Hardmeat, who was the most obese asshole of the five who had ruined him. When the work was completed, Osgood decided to start with Maximilian Fiasco, the most senior member of the board.