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

by Billy Wells

  I love you, but you must die.

  Suddenly the letters on the note faded and then disappeared completely. Zack held a blank sheet of paper in his hands. Immediately, he felt a strange feeling come over him as if someone else had taken control of his mind.

  He concentrated with all his might to combat this strange feeling, and after a time, he believed he had successfully overcome the pull of its dominating power over him. He balled up the note and threw it into a trashcan.

  Then, he placed the empty box in his suit pocket, left the room, and returned to the sidewalk outside teeming with people. Rush hour had already begun in Manhattan.

  He walked directly to a loading zone in the middle of the block and waited for a large delivery truck to come. He didn’t know why. Finally, he saw one rounding the corner and come barreling toward him. He heard Pandora’s voice resonating in his mind. He felt her will enveloping him. In his mind, he heard her speaking to him telepathically, "When the truck comes, leap in front of it, and die.”

  * * *

  When Pandora entered their apartment later that afternoon, she was sad and deeply depressed as she always was each time she had to kill her spouse for breaking their promise. But this time, the depression was worse than ever before. She had loved Zack far more deeply than she had loved any of the others. She decided she would wait a few decades to begin her quest to find husband number twenty-seven.

  The first thing she noticed was the black box on the kitchen counter.

  How did it get here? She had assumed the delivery truck had obliterated it when it squashed her hubby. There were other boxes in her inventory; she didn’t need the one Zack had opened. No one in five hundred years had escaped her spell when she commanded them to commit suicide.

  She went to the box and found it unlocked. She raised the lid, found a note just like the one she put and the box for Zack, and opened it. She couldn't believe the words written in scarlet on the paper:

  You're not the only one with a secret, Darling. I’m a vampire, too.

  Zack stepped into the room, beaming from ear to ear with a smile and holding two goblets of blood. When he saw her lips part and her canines protrude over her red tantalizing tongue, he realized he was ravenous. He could tell Pandora was ravenous, too.

  He placed the goblets on the table, and flew into Pandora’s arms, meeting her in midair. With reckless abandon, they began ravaging each other and drinking each other's blood like dogs in heat. This nectar would be an appetizer to keep them satisfied until they could prowl for a more substantial dinner later tonight. Sex would be their low cal dessert for the evening.

  Zack said, “Thank the gods, Pandora. Now we can finally dispense with the masquerade and move our coffins into the master bedroom so we can finally get a good day’s sleep.”

  THE MONSTER NEXT DOOR

  There it was again. Jacob heard the familiar bone chilling maniacal laugh through the paper-thin walls of his apartment. No, not exactly a laugh. More like a diabolical hyena-like giggle of a deranged maniac getting his jollies snipping someone’s fingers off with garden shears. Jacob had never heard a human being utter such a depraved, vulgar sound.

  He had no proof, but he was convinced Grover Mantz, his next-door neighbor, was not human. He had marveled at his stoic expressionless face for five years. He was sure he wore a mask and a toupee to conceal the secret horror beneath. Jacob was cursed with a sixth sense, which manifested frightful images of ghosts and evil spirits that haunted his nightmares and contributed to his prolonged, acute insomnia.

  Along with several ghosts of dead relatives, Grover Mantz was a frequent boogeyman that caused Jacob to wake up screaming almost every night. Sometimes he saw Grover as an alien with big eyes, big ears, and green scales over his entire body. In other dreams, he saw him as a black, hairy monster with a crocodile mouth and shark teeth. The gruesome incantations of both creatures made his blood run cold. But the recent monstrosity with red glowing eyes and a hellish tongue darting in and out of its mouth like a black serpent was the final straw. Jacob never had a restful night’s sleep after that, and he feared for his sanity. He knew he would have a breakdown if he didn’t do something soon to stop these horrific nightmares.

  Jacob didn’t know why he was the only one in the apartment building who could see through Grover’s disguise. When he mentioned his suspicions to the other residents, they rolled their eyes and scurried away from him. He even called the police several times, but they also considered him a crackpot with a screw loose. Whenever he mentioned the alien thing, or the beast with a crocodile mouth and shark teeth, the officer on duty would either hang up or threaten to send someone to take him away in a straitjacket if he didn’t stop calling.

  Jacob remembered the first couple of years after Grover moved next door to him. He was painfully shy and rarely came out of his apartment. He even had his groceries delivered by a messenger during that period. But about three years ago, Grover suddenly came out of his shell. That's when Jacob noticed the way he shambled along dragging his left foot rather than walking like a human. It wasn’t long after Grover started taking midnight strolls that Jacob noticed an unpleasant smell whenever Grover opened his door to get his newspaper. It was a dank, graveyard kind of smell like mildew, fresh earth, and spoiled meat. Why would such an overpowering stench suddenly emanate and linger in a first-floor apartment?

  Along with the growing list of peculiar occurrences and idiosyncrasies surrounding his neighbor, Jacob cringed each time he heard Grover’s fiendish laugh. It grated on his nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. He also noticed an odd fluttering late at night in the spring and fall when he left his windows open rather than running the air conditioning. It sounded like the bats in the belfry at the church on the corner, but, try as he may; he never saw what caused it.

  Grover was a night owl. He only went walking after the sun went down, usually at midnight. Jacob assumed he slept during the day like a vampire. Maybe he slept in a coffin filled with earth from the grave, which could explain the ungodly smell.

  Jacob’s obsession with every move Grover made had taken its toll on him, and because none of the residents knew or cared about the monster who lived in their very building, he was disturbed to the point of madness.

  Finally, when Margret Winston’s cat disappeared, Jacob decided it wouldn’t be long before Grover would come to do God knows what to him or one of his neighbors. Since the police would not intervene, he knew it was up to him to take the law into his own hands.

  Two nights later, after listening to the water dripping from a leaky faucet in his bathtub for three agonizing hours, Jacob snapped. He leapt from his bed and began to tear out the last strands of his comb over. He went to the kitchen to get what he needed. At three o'clock in the morning, he stormed out of his apartment and began to pound on Grover’s door.

  He knew Grover was awake because his TV was blaring as always. It wasn’t long before Jacob heard him dragging his foot across the carpet, and he saw an eyeball in the peephole of Grover’s front door. He heard the monster’s insidious voice, “Is that you, Jacob?”

  “Of course, it's me, Grover. Open the door. We need to talk.”

  “Is my TV too loud?”

  “No. The TV is fine. Open up.”

  The door opened a crack, and Grover peered out. “What do you want at three o’clock in the morning? Have you lost your mind?”

  Without warning, Jacob pushed the door open, grabbed Grover by the shoulders, and dragged him kicking and screaming into the hall. He struck his nemesis in the face with a vicious elbow, knocking Grover completely off his feet onto the floor. Jacob pounced on top of him, and withdrawing a huge butcher knife he had placed in his belt behind his back, he plunged it into Grover's chest to the hilt again and again. Grover shrieked in pain, his eyes widening with sheer terror. He threw his hands up trying to ward off Jacob's frenzied attack.

  Jacob ignored everything and continued to plunge the knife into Grover's chest and stomach ag
ain and again. Blood spurted in all directions and pooled in a big circle under Grover’s writhing body in the hallway. Jacob's neighbor on the opposite side from Grover burst into the hall in his pajamas with his face red with anger yelling, “What the fuck is going on here?” But, after seeing the hall redecorated with Grover’s blood, he darted back inside, slammed the door, and announced, “I’m calling the police!”

  Two other doors opened in the hall, and two more neighbors popped their heads out. They stood spellbound at the murder taking place before their eyes. But not wanting to get killed or involved, they also slammed their doors and called the police.

  Finally, Grover stopped struggling after eighteen stab wounds to the chest and stomach. Jacob didn't know if the butcher knife would do the job on an alien, but apparently, the hairy monster had succumbed to his prolonged attack. He was somewhat surprised at how easily he had ridden the human race of the horrible thing living next door.

  Jacob knew the police would arrive at any moment. He would soon have to prove once and for all Grover was a monster, and he wore a disguise to hide his secret identity. He grabbed a hank of Grover's hair and tried to yank off his toupee. But, to his surprise and chagrin, it wouldn’t budge. He grabbed the flesh beneath Grover’s chin and attempted to pull away the elaborate mask to reveal the black hairy face or the green alien skin underneath, but it was on too tight. Jacob couldn't find a ridge he could get his fingers under for leverage. In a last ditch attempt to prove Grover was indeed a monster, Jacob ripped open Grover’s tattered, bloodstained pajama top and was flabbergasted to see a normal human chest with a myriad of ugly stab wounds. How could this be happening? Grover’s disguise was awesome, and he couldn’t crack it.

  Jacob heard the sirens approaching in the street, and then the sound of loud voices at the front door. He heard the buzzer. Someone in one of the apartments had pushed the button to unlock the outside door.

  Two uniformed officers burst into the hallway with their side arms at the ready. Jacob looked at them in horror, knowing they would assume he had murdered his next-door neighbor for no reason. He rose from the bloody body and turned toward them, begging them to understand, “I did it to save mankind. I’ve never hurt a fly.” Jacob ranted, brandishing the knife in sweeping arcs like someone on a debate team trying to make a point. ”Grover Mantz was a monster,” he shrieked. “You must believe me. I have a sixth sense, which allowed me to see and feel the evil inside of him.”

  Both police officers stood their ground. One shouted, “Drop the knife now and place your hands on the wall. I won’t tell you again.” Both officers removed their side arms from their holsters and pointed them at Jacob.

  Jacob was too distraught to comprehend what the officer was saying as he shrieked and continued to wield the knife like a maniac. “Grover was a monster I tell you. He wore a disguise. Sometimes his face was hairy like a gorilla. He had a crocodile mouth and shark teeth. Sometimes he had green skin and monstrous eyes the size of dinner plates. He was hideous. I had to stop him for the sake of all of us.”

  “Don't come any closer. Stand down this instant or I’ll have no choice, but…” the young policeman shouted.

  Jason continued to shriek, “But when I saw the red glowing eyes, and the black tongue shoot from his mouth like a snake, I knew he was the devil himself.” He lunged forward, pleading, “Officer, I’m a hero, not a murderer.”

  The officers emptied their clips into his body. The impact of the bullets made Jacob look like a puppet on a string, jumping side to side in a surrealistic death dance before he fell to the tile floor.

  The officers stood over Jacob's body riddled with gaping holes, spurting blood. Neither of them had ever fired their weapons before except for when they practiced at the shooting range. The younger one retched at the sight of the sea of blood surrounding both bodies in the hallway. During the onslaught of bullets, the neighbors on the first floor had retreated into their apartments and double and triple locked their doors.

  “Damn,” the older officer said, “We told him to stop, but he kept coming. He must have heard us. What a nutcase.”

  “What else could we do? No one can blame us. We had to protect ourselves. He was wielding the knife like a madman, spouting that mumbo-jumbo about a monster. He said the man he kept stabbing was a gorilla with a crocodile mouth and shark teeth. He was obviously delusional and completely insane.”

  The officers looked back for the bloody body they had seen writhing on the floor in the hallway when they entered the apartment. Their mouths dropped open when they saw it was gone. All that remained was the blood that had pooled on the floor and the blood splatter on the wall. The door to Grover’s apartment stood ajar, and the black interior beckoned to them like a doorway to Hell.

  “Where’d he go, for God’s sake?” The officer with puke caked on the front of his uniform shouted in disbelief.

  “He couldn't get far after losing all that blood,” the other said, wide eyed. They reloaded their Glocks and crept into the room. Feeling for a light switch and finding it, the first officer turned on a table lamp in the corner, washing the room with light.

  On the floor they saw a trail of what looked like red blood turning green leading from the entry door into the adjoining room. And there in the middle of the floor, they found a lifelike latex mask of an elderly man with a thick head of grey hair.

  They almost browned their shorts when they heard a strange keening laugh from the next room. It wasn’t exactly a laugh but a diabolical hyena-like giggle. The kind of demented caterwauling Snidely Whiplash might make while watching the train booming down the track toward the helpless heroine strapped to the railroad track.

  Then, the stench of something from the grave wafted into the room and covered them like a blanket of Ebola, ominous and foreboding. Both officers shook uncontrollably as they crept cautiously into the next room.

  They saw movement at the window, and just for a moment in a flash of neon, they saw a hairy form peering at them with red glowing eyes and a long black tongue, vanishing like magic before their eyes.

  They ran to the window and looked out on the empty fire escape and the silent street below. Nothing moved. Whatever was there had disappeared like a wisp of smoke into the dark night.

  THE WALL

  During the month of June 1990, Cletus Brown had been drifting for eight days in an inflatable life raft with no land in sight in any direction. His current predicament was the result of his passing out after drinking too much rum and cracking the hull of his yacht on a reef.

  The luxury craft started taking on water immediately, and it didn't take long for the multimillion-dollar vessel to disappear into the murky depths. Thankfully, the collision had aroused Clete from his stupor in time for him to deploy the life raft. His father had told him when he’d given it to him for his twenty-fifth birthday it was stocked with supplies for about ten days. Clete assumed he was about two hundred miles off the coast of Borneo when he’d collapsed at the stern.

  The sky looked ominous. A storm was brewing. He’d really done it this time. He hoped his love of the bottle wouldn’t lead to a Darwin award for stupidity. He was too rich and too good-looking to die so young. His father was a multibillionaire, who showered him with cash and the finer things, which allowed Clete to travel around the world as a rich playboy. He had only just begun enjoying his three favorite things to the fullest, Captain Morgan rum, wild, big-breasted island women, and raising hell.

  Finally, on the ninth day, the fog lifted, and Clete spotted land far off. He began to use his paddles to navigate toward the distant island. As he approached, he began to make out a mountain range towering above the tree line toward the west and a manmade wall stretching across the breadth of the island at roughly the midway point. He hadn't seen the original King Kong movie for quite a few years, but this wall reminded him of the one in the movie. He shuddered at the thought of the prehistoric monsters that devoured many of the crew on Skull Island in the movie as a breath of a
cold wind bristled the hairs on the back of his neck.

  On the tenth day, Clete finally maneuvered the raft away from the huge rocks that stood like sentinels on the shoreline. The waves were awesome. It was all he could do to reach shore safely without crashing into the massive boulders. But finally, after a considerable amount of time riding waves and dodging rocks, he jumped out and dragged the raft far enough away from the surf to moor it before the next wave came crashing in.

  After catching his breath for a time, he stood there like a modern day Robinson Crusoe, looking at the dense terrain, the magnificent wall, and the gray mountains behind it. From the start, this island didn’t strike Clete as a paradise in the middle of the Pacific like many he’d seen on his travels. The waves battering the shoreline and the immense wall made it feel ominous and foreboding. He stood marveling at the massive wooden beams spiraling into the sky that looked as ancient as the pyramids. This overwhelming structure, obviously constructed by skilled artisans many years before must have been built to keep something big in or out depending on one’s perspective.

  Where were the people who had built it? Were they still lurking in the jungle beyond the beach? What could be so big and so terrible someone would spend years constructing such a colossal structure in the middle of the ocean?

  The dead silence that hung over the island unnerved him even more than the foreboding wall. In every jungle movie, he’d ever seen there was always the weird laugh of the Kookaburra bird among the trees, but for some reason, this island didn’t have one or any other bird he could hear. It seemed as if something terrible had gobbled up every living thing.

  It was getting dark, and Clete felt exposed and oddly nervous on the beach. He wanted to find an indentation in the rocks where he could escape the strong winds and the roar of the waves pounding the shore.