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

by Billy Wells

  Clete counted down the ten minutes in his mind as he waited for the rescue party to begin their assault while he trudged onward. If he lived, Clete pledged he would talk to his father about the buffoon in the copter speaking English to a band of pygmies who probably spoke Swahili or some other exotic language. On the other hand, how could a small black ops crew extract him safely from a village of pygmies. The threat on the loud speaker was probably a bluff at best.

  Many of the pygmies would also be slaughtered shortly if they didn’t lay down their spears and give him up, but they had no idea of this. They continued to whoop it up around the bonfire. Clete wondered if some type of jungle booze was fueling their frenzy.

  No sooner had the thought entered his mind than Clete heard a thunderous roar from the jungle. It must be the beast the wall was built to keep out, and it sounded pissed. Clete saw the unbridled terror in the eyes of the warriors who surrounded him. It far exceeded their fear of the announcement from the copter. The drums and the chanting became increasingly louder. The crowd grew more agitated.

  The soldiers began to prod Clete forward with a new urgency as the teeming throng parted in front of him. To his surprise, the pygmy warriors had veered around the steaming cauldron and continued along a path that wound around the middle of the village toward the enormous, foreboding wall. The line of pygmies bordering the path continued to bow to him as he continued to struggle desperately to free himself. Hundreds more warriors emerged from the jungle along the way.

  The odds of his survival seemed bleak, and probably hopeless. He estimated there could be a thousand frenzied spear-throwing pygmies, all whipped into a frenzy by some jungle narcotic to deal with and some enormous beast.

  Ten minutes later, the foliage blocking his view of what lay ahead parted, and he was finally standing before the awesome wall. Directly in front of him, about twenty pygmies strained to move an enormous log that ran across the breadth of the fifteen-foot wide gate. Once that task had been completed, about forty more men, twenty on each side, strained to open the thirty-foot tall gate enough for the five soldiers and Clete to proceed through it.

  Directly ahead, Clete saw a stairway leading to an altar. He stopped walking and tried to slow his march to impending doom by becoming dead weight like a toddler having a tantrum. Without skipping a beat, the diminutive warriors dragged him up the stairs and bound his wrists to a post at the top of the altar. Clete kept struggling to the point of exhaustion as the pygmy warriors retreated inside the wall and slowly closed the gate behind them.

  Clete had to piss like a racehorse, and since he'd been holding it for three hours, what else could he do, but let her rip. While the urine ran down his leg, he heard the splintering of trees and the crash of several more falling behind him. Something humongous was coming and toppling trees as it carved a path through the undergrowth.

  He heard a thunderous growl and the heavy footfall of the beast made the ground vibrate with each ponderous step. It screeched so loud Clete thought his ears would explode. He closed his eyes. What was the point of seeing the thing that would soon tear him limb from limb, rip his head off, and piss in his neck. He prayed it would be over quickly. He hated the sight of blood, particularly his own.

  Where were his rescuers? If they were going to save the day, they’d better hurry.

  From behind the mountain, two helicopters appeared simultaneously, one from the left and one from the right. They circled in an arc around the altar. Clete saw the outline of two men in the cockpit of the first chopper as it roared past him. One of the silhouettes inside raised his arm to wave. A split second later, a mammoth, scaly claw swatted the copter down like a pesky fly and sent it hurtling toward the jungle where it struck the side of a rock wall and exploded into a ball of flame.

  No sooner had Clete recoiled from the heat of this copter crash than the second copter opened fire with an ungodly barrage of artillery. It flew like a mad hornet with insane bravado right at the towering colossus roaring like a den of lions behind him. The concentrated attack seemed to do nothing but irritate the hideous monstrosity. To make matters worse, the pilot who obviously had more balls than brains misjudged the reach of the beast. The overzealous suicide bomber hadn’t noticed the tree the creature carried in his claw like a twig. It swung it at the copter like a battleaxe, and connecting, it propelled it into the trees like a giant, broken albatross. Clete watched it disintegrate upon impact into another fiery ball.

  The monstrosity was unlike anything Clete had ever seen in a zoo or even in a movie. It was a conglomeration of creatures, a truly frightful aberration. Its heart shaped head reminded him of a giant cobra, yet the beast stood erect like an ape. Green scales covered its torso. It stood at least four times the height of a normal human with massive bulging biceps and prodigious bulging thighs.

  A third copter swept farther around from behind, and hovering a safe distance from it, riddled the gargantuan creature with another barrage of heavy artillery. Clete watched in amazement as most of the bullets ricocheted off the green scales covering its body like armor. Then the bullets ascended the torso of the beast and zeroed in on its heart shaped reptilian head.

  The beast let out a thunderous roar of pain as one of the shots found its mark in its left eye. The monster covered it with one scaly claw and threw the tree club end over end at the chopper, which clipped its tail rotor. Immediately, Clete saw the craft, no more than twenty feet off the ground, start a slow tailspin.

  The pilot must have realized the damage to the rotor was lethal, and the copter would soon begin to spin like a top earthward to oblivion. He tried to veer away from the raging colossus to attempt a last-ditch crash landing. The chopper sideswiped a tree and cartwheeled into a thicket. As soon as the craft stopped thrashing, the survivors piled out and ran for their lives.

  The creature leveled the trees that stood in its path and bounded after them. It stepped on two of the men, smashing them into flattened bloody pulps, scooped up three others, and started to munch on them like human trail mix. Afterward it belched and spit out the remnants of uniforms and footwear. A piece of arm hung from between its teeth onto its lip, and then its lizard tongue slurped it inside.

  Clete closed his eyes and recoiled backwards as the beast turned toward him. He was fucked. He had nowhere left to go. The creature bounded toward him with a slithery, fluid motion. Clete couldn’t look. He closed his eyes.

  He felt the monster’s hot breath on his face and the stench of its fetid breath. He waited. When nothing happened, he couldn't stand the suspense, so he squinted a peek through one eye. He could see the lid of one of the creature’s eyes was shut. The other leered at him in wonder like it had never seen the likes of him before.

  Clete looked down at the stairs leading to the altar and saw shreds of ropes littering the ground. He assumed, as in the movies, the pygmies had offered him up as a sacrifice to the beast they apparently considered a god. Based on the number of pieces of ropes strewn about, there had been many sacrifices before him over many years. Clete strained to look at the reptilian monstrosity and saw disappointment written on its hideous face. A scaly claw descended, and the sharp tip of it sliced open his shirt and jeans in one downward motion. The beast pinched pieces of the fabric away leaving Clete, except for his socks and shoes; naked as the day he was born.

  He saw one big eyeball descend closer to his body and ogle him more closely. Then a shriek of unmistakable, utter despair from the creature exploded both of Clete’s eardrums as it pounded its chest and raised its enormous claw into the air and shrieked something animal he couldn’t translate in English even if he still had eardrums. Nonetheless, even though Clete didn’t speak reptilian, he knew from the look on the creature’s face it had said, “You're not a woman!”

  Then the beast squashed Clete like a bug on the sidewalk with the heel of its claw. Immediately it began to dismantle the enormous wall, one giant timber at a time, for revenge. By the end of the night, the beast snaked on some of the sur
viving pygmies and held illimitable dominion over the island.

  * * *

  Clete’s father sent several more search parties to the island to rescue his son before finally dying in his palatial mansion from a heart attack. Not only did the search parties fail to return, they were never heard of again. Magmus Brown died a broken shell of a man with no one he loved to leave his billions but his prized Siamese cat, Shaharazod.

  THE GREAT SANDINI

  Andrew had time to kill as he wandered into Juggs, a popular nightspot in the Village. He noticed on the sign outside a magician was the headliner tonight rather than the usual rock band. It was a light crowd compared to most Thursday nights. He thought of going down the street to Bongo’s, but decided a magician might be more satisfying than a Goth playing heavy metal bullshit that made your ears bleed. He was tired of seeing huge tattoos covering every inch of skin and hideous barbells hanging from their ears and noses.

  There were so few people attending tonight's show, he could sit anywhere he wanted. He sat down at a table almost dead center in front of the stage in the first row. The waiter swooped on him like a buzzard, hungry for tips on what Andrew assumed would be a slow night. He ordered a gin and tonic and popped an Altoid in his mouth.

  Andrew noticed a line of chairs behind a single mike stand on the stage. He counted twenty. He wondered if there would be enough paying customers to fill that many seats. The waiter placed a napkin and his cocktail on the table and scurried off. It was 7:45 and show time was at 8 o'clock.

  To Andrew’s shock and amazement, it was like a dam burst all at once. Throngs of people rushed through the outside door and started filling the seats around him. By 8 o'clock, the room was close to full.

  After a blast of music signifying the start of the show, the MC introduced the great Zandini. He was middle-aged and wore a black tuxedo. He opened the act by pulling a white rabbit from a top hat. Then placing the rabbit back inside the hat, the rabbit transformed into a white dove and flew offstage. The audience exploded with applause.

  After five captivating card tricks, Zandini announced he would do some hypnotism for the next part of his act. He asked twenty volunteers to fill the chairs on the stage. About ten people jumped up and rushed up the short stairway without any coaxing. After that, Zandini went from table to table and picked others to participate. Andrew cringed when he stopped at his table and said, “You look like a perfect victim… I mean participant.” Everyone around him motioned him toward the stage.

  Andrew took a sip of his drink, climbed the short set of stairs, and took one of the remaining empty seats. He knew his drink would be watered down with ice by the time he got back. He sighed.

  With a patsy filling every chair, Zandini began his spiel. He instructed the participants to close their eyes and concentrate on what he was saying as hard as they could. Andrew concentrated as the magician slowly counted backwards from ten to one.

  When Zandini reached one, he asked all the participants to open their eyes. Seventeen of them appeared to be in a trance while the other three smirked with pride the magician had not been able to hypnotize them.

  Zandini instructed the three to return to their seats. Starting from the left end of the row, he went from one person to another lifting their arm from their lap and letting it fall back to it. Some of the people, he let remain in their chairs, and others he told to return to their seats in the audience until only ten of the original twenty remained in their chairs. Andrew was one of them. Apparently Zandini had somehow deduced those seven he told to return to their seats were only pretending they had been hypnotized.

  The audience loved this part of the show. Several of the participants barked like a dog and meowed like a cat. One was told he was Little Richard, and after two stagehands wielded a piano to center stage, the man attempted to play and sing in Little Richard’s persona. The man couldn't play the piano worth a shit, but he did remarkably well on the vocals. Andrew wondered if he was a shill, someone who the magician had paid to play the part of Little Richard.

  Zandini finally came to Andrew, asked him his name, and instructed him to scream “bananas” every time he heard “monkeys” used in a sentence. He did a trial run and the crowd roared with laughter.

  Zandini instructed one of the women he’d hypnotized she was asleep, then awake many times in succession. Each time he said she was asleep, her eyes closed and her head fell to her shoulder. Each time he said she was awake she bolted upward to attention with her eyes bright and alert. Again, the audience roared with laughter and applause.

  After the hypnosis segment of the show was over, Zandini resumed his card tricks and then performed several sophisticated disappearing acts requiring props. A real crowd pleaser was when he sawed his female assistant in half and transformed her into a lion. Andrew’s schtick was intermingled between these acts. Six times, Zandini used a sentence, which included the word “monkeys” and Andrew would leap from his seat and scream “bananas.” The dumbfounded, clueless expression on Andrew's face was priceless and became the highlight of the entire show.

  When the show was finally over and Andrew got up to leave, Zandini called him to the side and whispered in his ear, “Meet me outside in the alley in five minutes. Do you understand?”

  Andrew replied as if still feeling the effects of the trance, “I understand.”

  Andrew left Juggs and stepped into the shadows at the entrance of the alley outside the club. He waited, and it wasn't long before Zandini joined him.

  “Well, Andrew, I have a special favor I need from you. Will you do it for me?”

  Without hesitation Andrew nodded and said in a robotic voice, “I will.”

  “Somehow I knew you’d say that,” Zandini replied, “You will remember what I’m about to tell you verbatim, and then you will forget we ever spoke. Do you understand?”

  Andrew answered, “Yes.”

  “Let me hear you say, ‘Yes, Master’.”

  “Yes, Master,” Andrew said with a glassy stare.

  Zandini said, “Good, Andrew. You're really a wonderful subject. Now listen carefully. On August 21 at midnight, you will go to 921 Sycamore Lane. The back door will be unlocked. You will enter the house and without turning on the light, you will go upstairs to the second door on the left. You will creep silently to the left side of the bed. On the floor under the bed, you will find a sledgehammer. You will use it to hit the blonde woman in the head ten times as hard as you can. Afterward you will put down the sledgehammer, pick up the phone on the nightstand, and call 9-1-1. You will tell them you have murdered Mary Smith, give them your location, and wait for the police to come. Do you understand what I want you to do?”

  “I understand,” Andrew said solemnly.

  “Now tell me what I just told you to do.”

  Andrew repeated it verbatim.

  “You really are a wonderful subject,” Zandini said, impressed with Andrew’s recall. “As I said before after you complete the task, you will not remember anything I've said tonight and will not remember you ever saw me at the club. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “You can go now, Andrew,” the magician said.

  Andrew turned and started walking away.

  Zandini shouted, “More fun than a barrel of monkeys!”

  Andrew screamed, “Bananas.”

  The magician smiled and walked away.

  As Andrew walked to the corner to hail a cab, he abandoned the phony stupor he’d been feigning for the past hour. He knew all about hypnotism, and most importantly, he knew how not to be hypnotized. During his youth, he’d worked with a hypnotist who called himself the Great Bumari. His real name was Bubba Clapp. He performed the same kind of act as Zandini. Andrew went to college with Bubba and from time to time, he helped him by being a shill at his stage shows at the county fair.

  Andrew used to impersonate Elvis back in the day when he participated as a paying customer and pretended to be hypnotized. Elvis was easier to impersonat
e than Little Richard because Elvis didn't play an instrument in the act.

  Andrew wondered if the man who played Little Richard was on the payroll. He could’ve been hypnotized, but he probably wasn’t. Andrew didn’t dispute the validity of hypnotism. He knew under the right circumstances many people are easily hypnotized while many are not. At the county fair, Bubba told him about half of the people pretend they're hypnotized when they aren’t so they can clown around. If the hypnotist doesn't figure out who they are, they can ruin his whole show by acting up at the wrong times. Andrew thought Zandini had been excellent in choosing the right subjects for the act. That is, except for himself, who was able to trick him because of his previous involvement with Bubba.

  A cabbie pulled to the curb and Andrew got in, “582 Riverside Drive,” he said.

  As Andrew watched the buildings passing on his way to his apartment on the west side, he pondered what he would do now he was involved in a murder plot. Should he call the police and tell them what Zandini had planned on August 21? Or should he forget all about it and just not show up when the day came?

  Could he live with himself if someday he read in the paper a woman had been bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer, and he could have stopped it? And what if the killer hired someone else to kill the woman and he crossed paths with Andrew later on? What would the murderer do knowing Andrew knew he had planned to murder Mary Smith.

  Who was Mary Smith? Was she the magician’s wife, girlfriend, blackmailer, competition? Where would Zandini be when the murder was being committed? Surely not lying next to the woman while her head was being hammered into a bloody pulp.

  Mary Smith. He repeated the name that certainly seemed suspicious like Jane Doe. Why would Zandini even tell him her name? It wasn't necessary to tell him. Could this just be some kind of joke? Could the magician have known he was deceiving him? Did he know he really wasn't hypnotized? Andrew didn't think so, but he had no way of knowing for sure. What a fine mess he’d gotten himself into this time. Why hadn’t he gone to Bongo’s for a lap dance?