Razorblade Dreams: Horror Stories

by Mark Lukens

  Marla came out of the bedroom, her eyes puffy with sleep. Richie had woken her up when he’d burst inside the house. She looked at him and Alyssa for a moment, then she looked into the kitchen at Lizzy, her expression turning to horror.

  Oh God, she knows, Richie thought. She knows that Lizzy’s really dead. She finally sees it now.

  “Why didn’t you get her anything to eat?” Marla scolded Alyssa.

  Alyssa looked too tired and apathetic to defend herself. And Marla didn’t wait for an answer from Alyssa; she was off to the kitchen to take care of her little girl.

  Richie looked at Alyssa and her haunted eyes. What could he say to her? How could he explain any of this?

  *

  That night, when it was bedtime, Alyssa pleaded with Richie and Marla—she didn’t want to sleep in the bedroom with her sister.

  “I’ve had just about enough of this,” Marla snapped at her daughter. “You weren’t there for her down at the beach, but you’re going to be there for her now. You hear me?”

  Alyssa’s face crumpled in pain and shock. “Mom . . .”

  Richie turned to Marla. “You can’t say that to her,” he said.

  “She’s going to sleep in the same bedroom with her sister,” Marla said through clenched teeth. “Lizzy is back, and we’re going to have a normal family again.”

  Richie didn’t argue.

  Alyssa gave up, resigned to her fate. She marched into her bedroom and crawled into bed. Lizzy was already tucked into her own bed, the covers pulled up to her pale face. She stared up at the ceiling with dark glassy eyes that had no moisture in them.

  Marla smiled at them in the doorway. “My girls,” she whispered.

  *

  Hours later Richie lay in bed, staring up at the darkness. Marla was sleeping deeply now on her side, facing away from him. He watched the dark ceiling, counting down the seconds until the light from the lighthouse washed over their room. Even with the curtains closed, the light managed to wash inside their room, lighting up the whole house.

  He lay there waiting to hear Alyssa’s screams in the night again. Was this how every night would be? Would he lie awake waiting to hear his daughter’s screams?

  Earlier he had tried to talk to Marla about Lizzy, about how strange she was now that she’d come back from the . . . ocean. But Marla wasn’t listening, tuning him out, having none of it.

  “Dad,” Alyssa moaned in the night.

  Richie was out of bed in a flash. He glanced back at Marla, but she hadn’t even moved. He ran out into the living room, and then to Alyssa who stood there in the darkness. He grabbed her shoulders and felt her shivering underneath his hands. Her eyes were wide in the darkness, her skin so pale (but not as pale as Lizzy’s).

  “She tried to bite me,” Alyssa whispered, her words almost incoherent as she trembled. “She was on top of me again, Daddy. She had her mouth open—it was open so wide, and she was trying to bite me.”

  The lighthouse’s light washed over the living room. Richie’s heart jumped when he saw the blood on Alyssa’s neck. He saw what looked like scratch marks on her arms.

  “Oh God,” Richie said.

  “She’s dead,” Alyssa said. “She’s dead but somehow she came back to punish me, to kill me for letting her die. She never sleeps. She closes her eyes . . . but she never sleeps.” Alyssa started crying, a silent sob, her mouth hanging open, her eyes squeezed shut.

  Richie hugged his daughter, trying to calm her down. He looked at the girls’ doorway beyond them, then he glanced back at his bedroom doorway. Marla hadn’t woken up yet. He guided Alyssa to the couch and sat her down. She was beginning to calm down a little.

  “I know,” he finally told her in a low voice.

  She looked at him in shock, not expecting an adult to believe her wild story.

  “I know she’s dead,” Richie said again. “I don’t know how she came back, or why, but I know that she has come back from the dead.”

  “But . . . but she’s not herself anymore,” Alyssa said.

  Richie nodded. He felt sick with responsibility. This was his fault. He had either dreamed up the visit with that old man in the shack, or the old man had really been there that night. Either way, Richie had asked for this. He had brought Lizzy back and now he had to make things right.

  “Look,” Richie said. He took his daughter’s hands. “I have to send her back.”

  Alyssa brightened, her eyes wide with hope. “I’ll help you.”

  “No,” Richie said immediately, his voice a little too loud. “No, I need to do this myself.”

  “I’m going to help you,” Alyssa insisted.

  “Alyssa,” Richie snapped. He almost told Alyssa that this was her sister they were talking about. But it wasn’t her sister anymore, was it? And that thing wasn’t his daughter either.

  “If we don’t do this,” Alyssa said, “then she’s going to get me. And then she’ll get you, and then she’ll get Mom.”

  Richie was silent for a moment, his mind spinning. His eyes shifted from his daughter back to his bedroom doorway, and then he looked at the other end of the house, at the girls’ doorway off of the living room. Neither Marla nor Lizzy had gotten up yet.

  “Please . . .” Alyssa whispered, on the verge of tears again.

  Richie sighed. “We have to be very quiet.”

  Alyssa nodded.

  Richie didn’t know how he was going to do this. He wasn’t sure if Lizzy was going to put up a fight or not. “We need to get some rope. Do you think you can coax Lizzy outside?”

  Alyssa looked frightened at the prospect, but she nodded her head, her eyes large and shiny in the darkness. She seemed willing to try anything.

  *

  Forty-five minutes later Alyssa had taken Lizzy by the hand and led her outside. Alyssa held on to Lizzy’s wrist tightly, but she was ready to bolt away from the younger girl at any second if attacked.

  Richie waited near some shrubs with the pieces of rope he had found. He had also grabbed some large sinker weights that he’d found in the shed, tucked away in a corner among other ancient fishing gear.

  “Dad,” Alyssa whispered.

  He stepped out from behind the bushes and stared at his two daughters. Alyssa looked frightened and nervous, full of pent-up energy, her body trembling. Lizzy just stood there as still as a statue, her limp hair blowing around in the night breeze that was already turning chilly, already signaling the end of summer. Her eyes were sunken into her face, and they looked like dark holes in her pale flesh.

  If Lizzy knew what was going on, if she had any idea of why she was out here, she didn’t show it.

  “Lizzy,” Richie said. “I want you to come with us down to the beach.”

  Lizzy didn’t nod or say anything. She just stared at Richie with the lifeless dark blobs that were her eyes out here in the night.

  Richie had a length of rope coiled up in his hand. He walked around Lizzy and stood behind her. He grabbed her arms gently and pulled them behind her back. Her flesh was so cold when he touched it . . . freezing. She didn’t resist, she just stood there and let him tie her wrists together.

  Alyssa was crying as she watched, but Richie didn’t know if she was crying from sorrow or relief . . . or both.

  “Come on,” Richie said more to Alyssa than to Lizzy. He guided his younger daughter by the shoulders down through the sand towards the beach where the night surf roared in the darkness, lit up every sixty-six seconds by the passing of the lighthouse beam.

  When they got to the water’s edge Lizzy stopped, like she realized what was going on. When she saw the water up close, she was suddenly afraid. And for that moment Richie saw his daughter again. She shook her head and started backing up in the sand, struggling with her bound wrists, twisting her body back and forth, grunting.

  “Lizzy,” Richie said, trying to hold on to her.

  “No,” Lizzy whispered. “No, Daddy. Please.”

  Richie froze. He stared at his daughter’s face
. She was looking at him . . . really looking at him.

  “Dad,” Alyssa screamed. “Dad, you have to do this!”

  But Richie wasn’t listening to Alyssa. He saw his daughter again, his Lizzy, his baby girl. Oh God, what was he doing? Was he crazy? What the hell was he trying to do to his daughter?

  Before Richie even realized what he was doing, he was untying the ropes from Lizzy’s wrists. He barely felt Alyssa beating on him with her fists, screaming at him not to fall for this.

  Richie was crying as he clutched Lizzy’s shoulders, staring at her, his vision blurry with tears in the darkness.

  Alyssa broke in between them, pushing Richie out of the way. Richie hadn’t expected the push, and he was knocked off-balance. He was back up to his feet in a second, one side of his body coated in wet sand now.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he growled at Alyssa.

  Alyssa didn’t answer. She stood facing Lizzy.

  Lizzy’s helpless expression turned sinister in an instant when she saw Alyssa, the smile of an evil creature, her eyes dark blobs again, her flesh even more pale in the moonlight.

  “I’m right here,” Alyssa told Lizzy. “Come and get me.”

  Lizzy rushed at Alyssa, her mouth wide open, a growl in her throat. Richie swore to God that it looked like his younger daughter had more teeth than she should’ve had, and those teeth looked longer and sharper. She was quick and strong, like an animal, and she pounced on top of her older sister, knocking her down to the sand, snapping at her neck like a rabid dog.

  Richie acted without thinking. He tore his younger daughter off of his older one and tackled her to the ground. She was face-down in the sand, and he already had her arms twisted behind her back, holding her wrists together. Lizzy struggled underneath him. She was so strong she nearly bucked him off of her. She was a whirling demon now, a tornado of strength and rage.

  “Here,” Alyssa breathed out, handing Richie the length of rope. Between the two of them they wound the rope back around Lizzy’s wrists, tying them together tightly. A few moments later Richie had Lizzy’s ankles tied together. He attached a rope to her ankles that he had already tied the ancient metal weights to.

  It was time.

  With tears in his eyes, a sob choking his throat, Richie carried this thing that used to be his little baby girl out into the roaring surf.

  A scream split the night.

  Richie turned around in the waist-deep water as a wave crashed against him, bathing him and the struggling thing that used to be his daughter in the freezing saltwater.

  “What are you doing?!” Marla screamed as she ran down the beach. The shaft of light from the lighthouse washed over her, revealing her horrified face for a moment as she ran towards them, and then she was shrouded in darkness again as the band of light moved on down the beach.

  “Hurry, Dad,” Alyssa said. “Please hurry.”

  Richie turned back around and plowed into the next oncoming wave. He pushed forward with his legs, trying his best to run underwater against the waves. When the water was up to his chest, he let Lizzy go. He watched her float away on the black water, her white nightgown billowing around her, her dark hair pasted across her pale face, her mouth open, water pouring in. She was sinking fast, the weights pulling her down.

  Marla bolted past Richie, diving down into the water.

  “Marla, no!” Richie yelled as he tried to grab her.

  His wife bobbed back up a second later, blowing water out of her mouth and nose, trying to spot Lizzy in the ocean.

  “She’s dead!” Richie yelled at his wife. “Can’t you see that? Can’t you see that she’s dead?”

  Marla didn’t answer. She dove down into the water, already ten feet away from Richie now, out in the deeper water.

  Richie started to go after Marla, but he felt a hand on his arm. He turned and looked at Alyssa who stood in the water next to him, the water almost up to her chin. Even though her face was wet, Richie could tell she was crying.

  “Let her go,” Alyssa said through a choked sob.

  Richie was about to snap at Alyssa—how could she say a thing like that? Of course Lizzy was dead, but Marla was still alive . . . they could still save her.

  “She’s never going to be okay,” Alyssa said as if reading Richie’s thoughts.

  Richie looked back out at the endless dark ocean in front of them as another wave crashed into them, knocking them back towards the shore. He stood back up and stared out at the water as the beam of light passed over it, illuminating the scene as Marla thrashed in the water, still screaming Lizzy’s name, still looking for her little girl. She would never stop looking for her . . . Richie would never be able to bring her back; he realized that now.

  “She’ll never be the same,” Alyssa said through chattering teeth, and then she started sobbing.

  Richie took his daughter into his arms and carried her back up to the shore. He knew she was right. He’d lost his Lizzy, and now he’d lost Marla. But at least he could still save Alyssa.

  This story started out as a screenplay idea. A producer called me up a few years ago and asked me to come up with several ideas for horror films for a studio. He asked me to come up with at least ten ideas pretty quickly, and he wanted a short treatment for each one. I think I came up with eight ideas, and then eight more, and finally four more after that. Well, the sad ending is that none of them got picked up, but the good news is that several of those treatments turned into stories and novels for me . . . and one of them was this one.

  A RECIPIENT FOR A BURDEN

  “There’s something strange about the new guy we hired,” Wyatt told Lee. “There’s something . . . something not right about him.”

  Lee glanced at his phone, already antsy, his mind already moving on to other matters, and he wasn’t hiding his annoyance about being called all the way out here to this jobsite for what was probably a petty argument.

  But this wasn’t petty. Wyatt needed Lee to understand that. Wyatt wasn’t the most eloquent person in the world at expressing his thoughts into words—that’s why he was a drywall hanger and not a friggin’ poet—but damn it, he needed to make Lee understand that there was really something wrong with this new guy.

  “What’s he done?” Lee asked with a sigh, still glancing at his phone. “Start a fight with one of the other guys?”

  “No.”

  “Drinking?”

  “No.”

  “Drugs?”

  “No,” Wyatt said, getting exasperated.

  Lee checked for messages on his phone, and for a moment Wyatt felt like slapping that phone out of his boss’s hand.

  But he didn’t do that.

  “So, what’s wrong with him?” Lee asked, finally looking at him. “What’s this thing that’s so strange about him?”

  “It’s not one particular thing I can really say . . .”

  Lee sighed again, and he looked like he was ready to jump back into his pickup truck. “Look, Wyatt, you can’t—”

  “I think he’s staying the night in the houses we’re working on,” Wyatt blurted out.

  Lee looked over at the one-story, ranch-style house in the clearing carved out of the woods. The yard around it was mostly dirt, the driveway not even poured yet. The sounds of screw guns zapping screws into the drywall and hammers pounding nails drifted out of the open windows. And then he looked back at Wyatt.

  Maybe that would get Lee’s attention. Wyatt wasn’t a businessman like Lee was, but he was pretty sure that it was against some kind of law or something for one of the crew to be spending the night in these houses. Or maybe it had something to do with insurance or something.

  “You ask him if he’s sleeping here?” Lee asked.

  “Well . . . yeah,” Wyatt answered.

  “And?”

  “And he said he’s not.”

  Lee gave a slight shake of his head like he didn’t understand.

  “But I saw empty soda cans down in the basement,” Wyatt went on quickl
y before Lee could say anything. “And an empty beef stew can. And there’s this . . .” Wyatt paused, trying to think of the right word. “Nest” came to mind, but he didn’t want to use that word. “There’s like this bundle of blankets and clothes in the corner of the basement, underneath the stairs. That’s where all the cans were, too.”

  “And you think those things are the new guy’s?”

  Wyatt knew how this was sounding; this conversation wasn’t going the way he had expected.

  “Did someone see him sleeping here?” Lee asked.

  “No. But he’s the first one here in the morning.”

  “Is he the last one to leave?”

  “Well . . . no. But I think he comes back at night after everyone’s gone.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Wyatt just shrugged. “He has these . . . I don’t know, these kinds of sores on his neck and wrists. I think he has more of them on his arms, but he’s always wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants no matter how hot it gets.”

  “Sores? Like a disease or something?”

  “No. Not sores, really. That’s not what I mean.”

  “Then what do you mean?” Lee asked. “Like track marks or something?”

  “I don’t think so. I asked him what they were, and he said that he’d cut himself. That’s kind of what they look like . . . like they’re cuts.”

  “So this guy’s got a few cuts?” Lee asked.

  Wyatt didn’t know what to say.

  “And that’s it? Some guy is battling through tough times, maybe catching a few winks in a basement until he gets his first check?”

  It was worse than that, Wyatt wanted to explain, but didn’t know how. There was more to it than just the cuts and his sleeping in the basement. The new guy (Daniel was his name—not Dan or Danny, but Daniel) was always staring at him in a strange way. And sometimes Daniel smiled when no one else was looking, a small and strange smile, just the ghost of a smile. Wyatt would catch Daniel staring at him throughout the day—just staring at him. Normally Wyatt would’ve told the guy to stop looking at him like that, but there was something about Daniel that really freaked him out for some reason. It was just his gut feeling that Daniel was bad news, and Wyatt always trusted his gut feelings. It seemed like Daniel was always watching him and waiting for something. Like he was hoping to see Wyatt hurt himself, cut himself with a razor knife or fall off the scaffolding or something. And even if Wyatt didn’t see Daniel staring at him, he could feel the man looking at him . . . always watching, always waiting. He wanted to tell Lee all of this, but he didn’t even know where to start.