Scary Stories: A Collection of Horror - Volume 1 (Chamber of Horror Series)

by Billy Wells

  The server came over and said, “How did I do? I don't have much experience carrying martinis on a tray. I think I spilled half of them on the way to the table.”

  “You were almost perfect,” Audrey replied, Emily was too upset to notice anything you did. We didn't even drink the martinis you served. You were a tad slow on cleaning up the drink Emily spilled, but I think it went better than I ever dreamed possible.”

  Audrey spoke louder into her hidden mike, “Well, am I right, Harry? Tell me you got it all.”

  A voice in her earpiece said, “We got it all. I think this will be the best show ever on Believe It Or Not. You deserve the prize. You may even have a shot at the hundred thousand dollar super prize money.”

  “What now?” Angelo asked, almost floating on air with excitement.

  “We are supposed to head over to Emily’s house for the celebration and the reveal.”

  “The reveal?” Angelo replied, looking puzzled.

  “Yes, you know…” Audrey explained, “When they tell her we fooled her, and it was just a segment for the Believe It Or Not TV show. I understand that all of her neighbors, her associates from work, and her immediate friends will be at her house when they pop open the champagne.”

  “What about Chuck? Will he be there, too?”

  “No. He won't be there in person; Barney, the producer, said he’s still in Chicago at an important business meeting. As of the time we made the initial call to Emily, he hadn't been able to reach him. All his calls have been forwarding to voice mail, but they are hoping to patch him in on a live video connection at the house.”

  After a few more high fives, the camera crew began packing up their equipment. Audrey and Angelo left the restaurant laughing loudly and headed toward their car in the deserted parking lot. Both of them were beaming with accomplishment and the anticipation of receiving their $25,000 prize money.

  “What's the first thing you're going to buy when we get the check?” Angelo asked.

  “I've always wanted to go to Europe, but I've never had the money. What about you?”

  I always wanted the 1956 Mickey Mantle Tops baseball card in mint condition to complete my collection.”

  Just before reaching their Toyota, Emily stepped from the shadows of a large shrub and barked, “I can't believe you motherfuckers figured out my husband is the Iceman.”

  Audrey and Angelo stood with their mouths agape, staring into the barrel of a big black gun with a long silencer.

  “What you didn't figure out is that I taught Chuck everything he knows.”

  Emily placed a neat hole in the middle of each of their foreheads with two barely audible, precision shots that sent both of them toppling backwards to the asphalt. She felt a warm mist of blood on her face as she peered down at her dear bridge partner and Angelo lying in a heap with a stew of brains and gore decorating the back end of their Camry. She surveyed the parking lot and noted two white vans with TV lettering parked in front of the entrance. Opening her car door and getting in, she drove into the street and headed for home.

  She couldn't wait to tell Chuck how her bridge partner had made him after he had fooled the police for so many years. She was also going to ask him about being in the Newark strip club instead of Chicago.

  When Emily pulled into the driveway of her house at 11:30 p.m., she noticed the light in the living room that was controlled by a timer was not on. She guessed the bulb must've burned out.

  Unlocking the door, she stepped inside, and immediately, flashbulbs and spotlights blinded her. She wondered how much blood splatter peppered her clothes and her face as the TV cameras rolled into view. Across the room on a gigantic monitor, she saw Chuck’s bewildered expression as someone handed her a champagne glass, and a houseful of familiar faces shouted “surprise” in unison and started pouring the bubbly for a toast.

  THE MAKEOVER

  The miserable excuse for a human being stood at the reception desk in a designer dress and an obscenely expensive diamond necklace. Two bodyguards who looked like lineman from the NFL inspected the people in the waiting room coldly. Everyone including the bodyguards winced as the female ogre barked at the young receptionist, “Do you know who I am?”

  “I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm afraid I don't. Do you have an appointment?”

  “Of course, I have an appointment. I'm here to see Dr. Best for my annual makeover and this time for a nose augmentation.”

  “Ah, Mrs. Crabtree,” the trembling young woman said, referring to an appointment book on her desk. “Yes, the doctor has set aside the entire afternoon especially for you. Please have a seat in the waiting room. Would you like coffee?”

  “My dear lady,” the obnoxious woman with the prune face replied sarcastically, “I'm not accustomed to sitting with the general public. I don't want to catch anything from this rabble. Don't you have a VIP lounge for people of my stature?”

  “I'm afraid not, Mrs. Crabtree. Please have a seat; the doctor will be with you shortly.”

  The door opened and an attractive young blonde man in white doctors’ garb looked into the waiting room with a concerned expression. Seeing the senator’s wife lambasting the poor befuddled receptionist mercilessly, he rushed to her rescue. Straining to put on a cordial smile, he said, extending his hand, “Mrs. Crabtree, are you ready to be even more lovely than you already are?”

  The wisp of a smirk cracked the woman’s perpetually sour expression. She quickly abandoned the receptionist with disdain and strutted through the waiting room with the young doctor and the bodyguards trailing behind her.

  Ignoring the doctor’s gracious remark, the middle-age battleaxe said loudly, so everyone could hear her, “I hope you're plastic surgery skills are better than your hiring practices. The woman at the desk in that cheap Goodwill rag didn't have a clue who I was when I walked in. She actually suggested I sit with the trailer trash in the lobby.”

  Everyone within earshot glared at her as if she had tossed a toddler into the path of a speeding taxi. If looks could kill, Crabtree would have been murdered by all ten of the people seated in the waiting area.

  Dr. Best held his tongue and escorted the pompous bitch toward the surgery area bustling with activity. He had a bad feeling the $30,000 tweaking of Crabtree’s wrinkles and her nose job may not be worth the hassle of dealing with her. After several more confrontations with the staff, the anesthesiologist finally ended her venomous attacks with a cocktail of sedatives.

  Crabtree was forty-one years old and would've been a beautiful woman if not for her loathsome, pompous attitude and caustic tongue. No matter how much money she spent smoothing wrinkles that were barely visible, no one could tolerate her contemptuous, high-pitched, nasal voice that grated on the nerves like fingernails on a black board.

  Best dreaded every moment he spent with Crabtree each year. Unfortunately, he had no choice but to endure the abuse since she was a senator's wife and a staple on every club and civic group in the city.

  This year, in addition to smoothing a few wrinkles under her eyes, Crabtree had decided her nose was a bit too large. To make sure nothing was left to chance, Best spent the entire evening prior to the surgery agonizing over every detail of the procedure. He had even made the supreme sacrifice of giving his tickets to the Celine Dion concert at Madison Square Garden to a colleague.

  For hours, he toyed with every possible scenario in his $10,000 makeover program on his computer. Finally, at about 1 AM, he pushed enter on his desktop, and suddenly, the perfect sized nose for Crabtree’s face appeared on the monitor. He smiled and thought, “Wow, after a month of healing, Crabtree would have a face to die for.” Carrying the thought further, he grimaced at the tragedy of transforming a woman with such a miserable attitude into a goddess.

  He wondered if he would receive a gigantic tip for his extra efforts. Crabtree had greased his palm with an extra $5,000 last year when he’d done far less. She'd placed the check in his palm as if she was handing a bellman a tip for carrying her luggage. He mig
ht even be featured in the lead article in Plastic Surgery Today for such a work of art. Ah, well, enough dreaming. He decided to turn in so he could be fresh for tomorrow.

  The next day, the minor procedure and the more intricate surgery went exactly as expected. Although the young doctor had done it hundreds of times, he took extra pains with Crabtree, his most important client.

  * * *

  After several weeks of changing bandages, the momentous day of removing the nose covering finally came. Best had pleaded with the pompous prima donna to refrain from peeking at his masterpiece until it was completely healed. As impossible as it seemed at first, Crabtree agreed not to look at the results until the day it would be unveiled to the public.

  Maria, Dr. Best’s most trusted assistant, did the honors of carefully removing the bandages as Crabtree reclined in an examination chair facing the doctor. When Maria lifted the housing protecting the nose, Best reclined in his plush, leather swivel chair and beamed with pride at not only the best nose job he’d ever performed but also the finest one he’d ever seen. Maria saw the broad grin on his face and raised her thumb high to corroborate that she agreed this was a remarkable accomplishment.

  Turning Crabtree’s chair around to face a large mirror surrounded by a circle of soft lights, Best and Maria awaited her expected expression of approval but instead, a shrill gut-wrenching scream brought the receptionist and several other doctors and nurses into the examination room.

  “What have you done to my face, you incompetent butcher,” Crabtree ranted. “Michael Jackson's nose was larger than mine when he died. You'll be hearing from my lawyers. Rest assured, I will see that your license is revoked, and you will never practice medicine again.”

  “You pompous bitch,” Best screamed. “This is the best nose job I've ever seen. There's no one on earth that would say otherwise.” Best strode off in a huff leaving his assistants to deal with the malicious woman as she continued to rant and rave at the top of her lungs.

  At the legal hearing, despite Crabtree’s stature in the community as the senator’s wife, reputable surgeons agreed that Best’s work had far exceeded the level of care expected for this type of plastic surgery. The judge dismissed the case and reprimanded Crabtree for wasting the court’s time with such a frivolous lawsuit.

  The New York Post carried Crabtree’s stunningly gorgeous face on the front page of the morning edition under the headline, “SENATOR’S WIFE FOUND TOO BEAUTIFUL; FRIVOLOUS CASE DISMISSED AGAINST PLASTIC SURGEON.

  Crabtree fumed as she sat in her lush estate, and after referring to her Blackberry, made several calls. Fifteen minutes later, her sour expression morphed into a cruel smile as she returned her phone to her purse.

  Two evenings later, A battering ram imploding his front door awakened Best from a sound sleep in the middle of the night. As he struggled to put on a robe, several police officers barged into his bedroom, blinded him with a flashlight, and started reading him his rights. The tallest officer lifted a bag of white powder in front of his face and declared he was under arrest for possession and selling an illegal substance to minors.

  Best looked at the police officer as if he had lost his mind and begin to tell him clearly, he had no idea what he was talking about. He saw a team of forensic investigators collecting evidence in the living room as the first officer’s partner cuffed him, pushed him out the door, and escorted him down the stairs to their cruiser.

  Despite many testimonials praising the character of Dr. Best and his spotless record of not even having a parking ticket, ten unsavory witnesses for the prosecution took an oath and swore they had seen Best selling drugs to minors on many occasions. The officers that searched the doctor’s house testified they had found large quantities of heroin and cocaine as well as other pharmaceuticals in a kitchen cabinet and in the trunk of Best’s car.

  In addition to the fabricated evidence, Best complained to his attorney that half of the jurors seem to be biased against him from the start. He couldn't believe his lawyer had allowed such unsavory characters to be jurors without contesting it and suspected that Crabtree had even bribed his lawyer.

  After a short trial, the jurors retired to their chambers, and in thirty minutes, returned to the courtroom with a verdict of guilty. With the senator’s wife’s input, the judge sentenced Best to ten years in a hard-core prison where the most horrific murderers and perverts were serving time. The warden also had a reputation for cruelty and harsh treatment of the inmates.

  * * *

  Ten years later, Best left through the front gate of the prison. The eyes, once bright with youthful exuberance, joyful anticipation, and love of life, were now steely and cold.

  He saw the taxi he had ordered parked along the high chain link fence topped with razor wire. About twenty yards to the right, the sentry in the tower above him glared down at him like a piece of road kill. He assumed the psycho in the mirrored sunglasses was trying to rattle him by continuing to point his rifle in his direction.

  Best walked to the cab with a small suitcase and got into the back seat.

  “Where to?” the driver asked with a sullen expression that made it painfully clear he did not want an ex-con for a client.

  Best said, looking back into the cold stare in the rearview mirror, “Take me to the Safe Haven Inn on Remington Avenue in Mount Glory.”

  Pushing some buttons on this GPS monitor, the cab driver said sarcastically, “The fare for that location is over $100. I need to see a credit card or some cash to go to Jersey.”

  Best’s granite face returned the perpetually icy stare, “You don't think I look trustworthy?”

  “You can't be too careful these days on fares from this location,” the cabbie replied, still looking for some reassurance.

  Best pulled out his wallet and showed the driver several Benjamins tucked inside.

  “You've already got $20 on the meter for waiting time. You said to be here at 3 PM.”

  “Sorry, fella, I couldn't get the guards to move any faster. They decided to give me one last cavity search for old time’s sake.”

  The cabbie grinned, pressed a button on the meter, and pulled away.

  Best and the driver didn't speak on the way to Mount Glory.

  When the taxi veered onto the Remington Avenue exit, Best noticed the manicured lawns and the houses seemed a little shabbier than he remembered. The long climb to the top of the steep hill brought back memories of a commute he’d had during a snowstorm long ago.

  When the cabbie pulled into the Safe Haven Inn parking lot and announced loudly they had reached their destination. Best flinched from a momentary doze, paid the fare, and exited the cab with his small suitcase.

  When he reached the front desk, he showed the clerk his new Visa card and rented a room for a week. He hoped this would be adequate time for him to find a way to get to Crabtree. He couldn’t go on with the rest of his life until he gave her that special makeover he’d been dreaming of for more than 3,650 days.

  After placing his suitcase in his room and checking his Ipad for a time, he returned to the front desk and found the bus to Ralston would leave in ten minutes.

  When Best made his way to the stop directly in front of the motel, he felt a twinge of sadness at seeing the Old Blarney Irish Pub across the street. He and his fiancée had eaten many a plate of corn beef and cabbage there before he went to prison. Marcy, the only girl he ever loved, had married another plastic surgeon, and had two kids now. He heard they lived somewhere in Connecticut. The bus arrived right on time and he boarded it, still reminiscing his lost love and what might have been.

  Best exited the bus in Ralston, walked a few blocks to a Budget Rent-A-Car location, and signed up for a week's rental of an Impala.

  Leaving from the Budget lot, Best drove to a storage facility he had rented to store his personal belongings after his arrest.

  Pulling up to the container, he got out the car, found the box, and unlocked it with the key from a ring in his pocket. Seeing the lea
ther suitcase his father had given him at graduation was like seeing a long-lost friend. He pulled back the catches on the case, heard the familiar snap, and raised the lid. He smiled when he saw the set of stainless steel scalpels glimmering in the sunlight.

  His fingers tingled with anticipation at what he would do to Crabtree with his beautiful scalpels once he got her on the table. Each time a group of prison bulls held him down and took turns sodomizing him, he thought of each incision he planned to make when he got out, over and over again. He closed the case, placed it in the trunk of the Impala, and returned to the motel.

  Once in his room, he removed his iPad from his suitcase and started surfing the net for anything he could find about Malcolm Crabtree. Best had been following the senator’s career whenever he could get his hands on a computer in the slammer. Unfortunately, the senator had been recently reelected for another term, which meant surveillance on him and his wife would be an obstacle Best would have to overcome.

  At thirty-two years old, Best had been the youngest and the most successful plastic surgeon on Fifth Avenue. Even now, at forty-two, he looked younger than his years with his classic baby face, except for the two facial scars the prison bulls had given him while fighting them off. He would have them removed when he reached his final destination. Until then, he would have to rely on his expertise with makeup to play the parts he would need to play to get to Crabtree. He had become an expert in the field from taking extensive courses at Westmore Academy in LA to complement his skills in plastic surgery.

  Looking in the bathroom mirror, rather than seeing the pretty boy look he was accustomed to, he saw someone who might play the next James Bond with his rugged masculine square jaw and his rock solid muscular biceps.

  The next day, Best parked as close as he could to the senator’s estate without arousing suspicion. Right away, he was demoralized when he realized how hard it was going to be to get Crabtree alone. Based on her husband’s lofty position as senator, she usually had several beefy bodyguards watching her every move.