Razorblade Dreams: Horror Stories

by Mark Lukens

  “You’re eleven years old now,” she’d told him. “You’re too old to be scared to sleep in your own bedroom.”

  He had cried . . . actually started crying, and that made Mom even angrier.

  “You need to get to bed. You have school in the morning.”

  But at least she had given in a little and allowed him to leave his light on. After he was alone in his room, he turned on a small radio that he had plugged in next to the lamp so he could have some noise to drown out any other sounds creaking in the house. He also had the two flashlights J.T. had given him earlier. He hid one of them under his pillow, and the other one was right next to his lamp in case it went out again in the middle of the night.

  At first he had convinced himself that he was being a baby, and he had summoned the courage to march to his bedroom.

  But now that it was late and everyone else was in bed, he was wide awake and he was scared.

  He could hear creaking noises even over the music on the radio.

  He tried to ignore the sounds, turning over onto his side, facing the lamp. His eyes were so tired they felt like they had sand in them. He rubbed them with his knuckles and then closed his eyes.

  It seemed like he’d only been asleep for a few minutes when his eyes popped open. The alarm clock’s red digital numbers across his bedroom shined in the darkness: three thirty a.m. The lamp was out again. He heard a breathing sound in his bedroom.

  Someone was close to him and breathing hard.

  J.T.? He wanted to call out to his brother. Maybe J.T. had snuck into his room and was playing a prank on him. If that was true, then he would never talk to him again.

  The breathing was heavier, closer. He felt hot breath on his face in the darkness. And that breath smelled. He couldn’t pinpoint what the odor was, but it was what he imagined death smelled like, a rotting corpse maybe with its mouth wide open.

  And then something touched him, brushing his leg underneath the sheet.

  He felt a weight sinking down at the end of the bed, like someone heavy sitting down by his feet.

  Tyler screamed and grabbed the flashlight. His fingers were trembling so badly that he dropped the flashlight when he tried to turn it on.

  Something touched his leg again. The breathing was heavier now, almost a grunting sound.

  He pawed at his pillow, looking for the flashlight he had hidden under there. Finally his fingers curled around the tube of plastic, and his thumb found the switch. He flicked it on and shined it down at the end of the bed, the beam of light landing on the dark figure of Mr. Boone. His face was pure darkness, hidden under the shadow that the brim of his tall hat created. But his eyes were glowing red, and his mouth was a smile of sharp white teeth.

  8.

  It was a repeat of last night as J.T. and his mother stormed into Tyler’s room. He was screaming again, and this time he was practically inconsolable.

  “He was in here again,” Tyler blubbered, tears streaming out of his eyes. “He was . . . was breathing on me . . . and he was at the end of my bed . . . he touched my leg . . .”

  Tyler clung to Mom, still sobbing.

  J.T. felt tears sting at his own eyes. His little brother could be a pain in the ass, but he hated seeing him terrorized like this.

  After Mom got him calmed down, she let him sleep out in the living room again with the TV on.

  J.T. slept out there with him. Of course he didn’t mind, he told their mother who needed to get back to bed because she had to be at work at five in the morning. J.T. set an alarm clock in the living room and promised that he would get them up and ready for school.

  But as he lay there, he was pretty sure that they weren’t going to school tomorrow. Tyler wasn’t sleeping yet, and he didn’t look like he’d had much sleep in the last few days.

  “I don’t know what to do,” J.T. said.

  Tyler didn’t answer. He just stared at the TV in a fog.

  “We should tell Mom what we did.”

  Tyler still didn’t say anything. J.T. was proud that his brother hadn’t ratted on them, but now it was getting out of control. But what were they supposed to tell their mother? Tell her that they had performed a ritual, and now there was a demon inside the house? She wouldn’t believe them. She would just scold and ground J.T. for scaring his little brother.

  9.

  And that’s exactly what happened the next afternoon. J.T. tried to explain what had happened, he even offered to show her the film that he’d shot, but she wouldn’t hear any of it. Not only was she pissed that they hadn’t gone to school and that she was going to have to call the school and make up a lie because she hadn’t okayed their absence, but she was even angrier that he had performed some kind of satanic ritual in their own home and had scared the bejesus out of Tyler.

  “You’re grounded from your computer, from the internet, from your phone!”

  J.T. didn’t care so much that he was grounded. He just wanted a chance to explain his side of it, but Mom wasn’t listening.

  “You’re both going to school tomorrow,” Mom told them as they sat on the couch. She paced in front of them. “And Tyler, you’re going to get over these nightmares. This isn’t real.”

  “It is real,” Tyler whispered, his voice monotone, his face scarred with shock.

  “See what you’ve done?” Mom said.

  J.T. tried to plead his case, but it wasn’t working. He didn’t know what to do. He needed to find a way to solve this, to drive Mr. Boone out of their home.

  10.

  “Tyler,” a man’s voice whispered in his bedroom.

  Tyler’s eyes popped open. He stared right at his lamp which was still on. The radio was on, the music playing softly. The flashlight stood on its end right next to the radio, and he had the other flashlight tucked underneath his pillow.

  At least the lamp was still on. Thank God for that.

  “Tyler, turn around.”

  Tears leaked from his eyes as his body shivered uncontrollably underneath the sheet. His mouth was dry with fear, and he wanted so badly to cry out for J.T. and his mom, but he couldn’t make his throat work.

  “Tyler . . . it’s me. Don’t you want to see me again?”

  He recognized the voice . . . it was his dad. His dad was in the bedroom with him, on the other side of the bed closer to the closet.

  “Let’s hang out together, buddy.”

  Tyler stared at the light, his vision blurry with tears now. He shook his head no, and he couldn’t stop his body from shaking.

  Footsteps approached the bed. A moment later, Tyler felt the weight of someone sitting down on the other side of the bed, the mattress sinking down from the person’s weight. Then he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, felt the hot and filthy breath on the back of his neck. He could imagine what his father would look like now after his car accident, after being dead so long.

  “Tyler . . . I want you to come back with me. I’m lonely. I need you there, buddy.”

  Tyler screamed and screamed.

  11.

  “I’m listening,” Mom told J.T. as she stood in the dining room, her eyes bleary with exhaustion—she looked almost as tired as Tyler did now.

  It took an hour to calm Tyler down and get him to stop crying. He was on the couch now, propped up into a sitting position with pillows, watching the cartoons on TV but not really watching it, zoning out again.

  Tyler had told Mom that Dad had been in the bedroom with him. He said that he’d felt him behind him in the bed, heard his voice, felt him touch his shoulder. That was the last straw for Mom. She was still upset about Dad’s death, and it was something she didn’t talk about much. Just the mention of a memory could set her crying in a minute, and J.T. tried to avoid that as much as possible.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” J.T. told her. “But I want you to watch what I filmed after that.”

  She looked skeptical.

  “I’m willing to take full responsibility for this,” J.T. said.

  �
�You bet your ass you are,” Mom said.

  “This is all my fault, but you have to believe me. I think this might be real.”

  Mom sighed and nodded.

  J.T. hurried to his room and got his laptop. He turned it on, and selected his latest file, getting it ready to play. He brought it back and set it on the dining room table.

  Mom had a cup of tea she’d nuked in the microwave, steam drifting up from the top of it.

  J.T. told her everything they had done, and Mom listened in shocked silence. She didn’t interrupt him at all.

  “Will you watch the video?” J.T. asked her. “Please.”

  She watched the laptop screen. After she’d finished the video, she asked J.T. if he could rewind it so she could watch it again. She watched it one more time, and then finally looked at J.T. “This is real. You didn’t fake—”

  “No, Mom. I swear to God, I didn’t.”

  She looked at his face for a moment, and he could tell that she believed him.

  “Mom, I’m scared,” J.T. whispered, and he glanced over at Tyler to see if he was watching them. He looked back at his mother. “I . . . I don’t know what to do.” He surprised himself by beginning to cry. He would never admit out loud how much he loved his little brother, but he was scared now that he was losing him. Tyler was wasting away, slowly going insane from this thing that was in their home haunting him now.

  Mom sighed and shook her head.

  “I . . . I could look up some more stuff on the internet,” J.T. mumbled. “I’ve tried for the last few days, some kind of . . . like antidote to whatever we did here . . . but I can’t find anything.”

  “No,” Mom said in a gentle voice. “I think I know what to do.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to call my Aunt Coats.”

  Aunt Coats? “What … what can she do?” J.T. asked, struggling to even remember the last time he’d seen his mother’s aunt. She lived alone on a small farm in West Virginia that was nestled down in a valley. He and Tyler had visited her years ago, back when Tyler was only about four years old. Aunt Coats was a hick . . . plain and simple. She lived on some backwoods farm with some chickens, a few cows, and a large vegetable garden and greenhouse. She owned a 1970 GMC pickup truck that her husband had paid off when he was alive, and it was the only vehicle they owned. She didn’t have a computer or a TV or even a cellphone. The only thing her place was good for was to hide out if a zombie apocalypse came.

  “She can help,” was all that Mom would say. She got up and walked right over to the cordless phone in the kitchen. She grabbed the phone and then took the address book out of the kitchen drawer. It was one o’clock in the morning, but Mom dialed the phone anyway.

  “Aunt Coats?”

  Mom waited a moment, listening. Aunt Coats must’ve been talking away on the other end like she’d known Mom was going to call her.

  Finally Mom nodded as tears slipped out of her eyes. “That’s right,” she said. “We need your help.”

  AUNT COATS

  1.

  Aunt Coats had taken the first flight available, and Mom had picked her up from the airport the next afternoon. J.T. and Tyler had skipped school again to go with their mom to the airport, and they waited in the car.

  Mom walked towards the car with Aunt Coats walking right beside her. Mom was a small woman, but she looked gigantic next to Aunt Coats who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds and probably only stood about five feet tall. But even though she was small, Aunt Coats exuded strength and a fierce confidence. Aunt Coats carried an ancient leather bag the size of a small suitcase in one hand, and Mom carried Aunt Coats’ other larger leather suitcase. They loaded the bags into the trunk, and J.T. got into the backseat with Tyler so Aunt Coats could take the passenger seat.

  “Boys,” Aunt Coats said with a tight smile, nodding at them in greeting. Her face was a roadmap of wrinkles. She had piercing blue eyes that sparkled like rare gems, a greenish-blue color. Her hair was pure gray and pulled back in a tight ponytail, tied up with some kind of rawhide string. She wore plain clothes that looked like some kind of prairie clothing from the wagon trail days. Her shoes were work boots, and she had on saggy knee-high stockings. She smelled like a concoction of herbs and spices, and she sat up straight, as rigid as a stick of wood, yet she moved with a suppleness that spoke to a life of constant activity. Her mind seemed as sharp as her hawk-like eyes.

  “Aunt Coats,” J.T. said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “Mmm,” she said like she knew better . . . like she knew that people didn’t call on her because of her pleasant company; people only called on her when they needed her particular set of skills. “You two have gotten big,” she finally said, and her words seemed as stilted and fake as J.T.’s hollow platitude had been. They were both awkward around each other, that gulf that comes with so much time passed between distant family members, neither knowing where to start.

  “Let’s go,” Mom said with a smile. She was a natural people person . . . she dealt with customers all day long, and she was an expert in the small talk department and setting people at ease. “You hungry, Aunt Coats?”

  “No, ma’am,” Aunt Coats said, her voice crackly and dripping with a southern twang. She seemed to have all of her own teeth; they were small and stronger than they looked.

  “We’ll cook something up when we get back to the house,” Mom said.

  J.T. had hoped they would stop and pick something up, but he didn’t argue about it.

  On the drive back, J.T. thought about what Mom had said about Aunt Coats. She was her mother’s sister and the black sheep of the family, still living on the land that her mom’s side of the family had come from since nearly the time this country was founded. Mom’s distant relatives were backwoods people who believed in superstitions and ghosts, spells and conjuring. These were as real to these people as anything to us.

  Aunt Coats had never gotten along with Grandma, Mom’s mom, and they had never reconciled their differences before Grandma suddenly passed away a few years ago. But Aunt Coats both held a grudge and didn’t at the same time. She accepted that she was an outcast, but she was also willing to jump on a plane to help at a moment’s notice.

  “She said that she’s the only one who can help us,” Mom told J.T. after she’d gotten off the phone with her last night.

  They had slept fitfully after that phone call, all of them together in the living room like Aunt Coats had instructed. She told them to light some candles on the dining room table and keep as many lights on as they could and still be able to sleep. She would handle the rest when she got there.

  Maybe this would work, J.T. thought. He prayed to God that Aunt Coats, a woman whose whole family had shunned her, would help them.

  2.

  Aunt Coats entered their home right after Mom unlocked and opened the front door. J.T. and Tyler followed them in. J.T. carried Aunt Coats’ larger suitcase for her, and the old woman carried her smaller leather satchel.

  Mom was rambling about something as J.T. closed and locked the front door, but her words died away when she saw the expression on her aunt’s face. Aunt Coats wasn’t listening to Mom anymore; she looked around the living room and then walked slowly towards the hallway.

  J.T. and Mom exchanged glances. Mom’s eyes shifted to Tyler who still looked like a walking zombie.

  “Oh he’s here alright,” Aunt Coats whispered as she entered the hallway.

  J.T. wasn’t sure if he should follow her through the house or not.

  “You’re going to leave this place!” Aunt Coats yelled from somewhere down the hall. “You’re going to leave this family alone!”

  3.

  Mom made some dinner, and Aunt Coats insisted on helping. Aunt Coats got a small wooden box out of her suitcase which was crammed with a collection of old clear bottles of herbs and spices that she sprinkled onto their meal. The bottles didn’t have labels or names on them, and she didn’t offer any information—but wh
atever she did to the food made it taste so much better.

  “There’s power in herbs and plants,” Aunt Coats said as they ate dinner. “So much power and most people don’t even know about it. So much knowledge forgotten over the years.”

  Tyler ate his meal in silence—he’d hardly spoken a word in the last twenty-four hours. J.T. wanted to console his little brother; he wanted to promise that their aunt would help them, promise him that Aunt Coats would make Mr. Boone leave. But most of all he wanted to apologize for doing this to him.

  After dinner, Mom cleared the dishes away. Aunt Coats turned to J.T. “You said you recorded the ritual you performed on Friday night?”

  J.T. wouldn’t even look at Tyler as he nodded. “Yes.”

  “Let me see what you filmed.”

  J.T. got his laptop for her and played the video.

  Aunt Coats watched the laptop screen intently. She was hunched forward, her eyes narrowed, her mouth a thin line. She looked angry, ready to fight.

  J.T. listened to the sounds coming from his laptop. He heard Tyler’s screams on there. He heard himself running to turn on the lights. He heard both of them shouting.

  After Aunt Coats was finished with the video, she sat back in her chair and pursed her lips, nodding slightly. “We’re going to need to do that ritual again.”

  Mom had just walked back to the table, but she stopped. They all stared at Aunt Coats in silence.

  “But this time we’re going to have to do everything backwards . . . reverse the whole thing.”

  “That’s it?” J.T. asked without thinking, suddenly realizing how rude it had sounded.

  If Aunt Coats thought his question was rude, she didn’t show it. She just nodded. “There’s a little more to it than that. You’ll see. We need everything that you had in that ritual.”

  “Make a list,” Mom told J.T.

  J.T. ran to his bedroom and came back with a spiral notebook and a pen. He watched the footage on his laptop again and wrote the list.