The Lamplighters

by Frazer Lee

  Sounds and smells enveloped her like the flesh she was wearing and Marla allowed herself to be carried away by them. She heard the sea and saw lights flashing and opened her eyes to see herself, as this beautiful blonde stranger, on the rocks by the lighthouse. A man was standing outside throwing a ball high into the air and letting it drop, down, down into tiny little hands. Marla fell with it and drew breath sharply, recognizing the little boy instantly. It was Vincent’s boy, but as a true child. Every ounce of terrible perversity was gone from his face and all that remained was wide-eyed innocence. She felt tears trickle warm down her borrowed face as she watched him laugh and shout as he caught the ball and held it triumphant before throwing it back to his father. His father. Yes, Vincent was standing there playing with his son, large as life and several years younger. Her heart ached seeing him this way, so young and in such good health. The clouds in the sky beyond the lighthouse cleared a little and the light of the sun shone through the glass at the top of the towering lighthouse. A bright beam of sunlight framed Vincent and the boy, drenching them in a glow the color of fresh sunflowers. It seemed as though father and son were surrounded by an aura made of their love for one another. But even as she wept, Marla felt her host’s emotions blacken somehow. She was watching Vincent and the boy like a spiteful child might watch a beetle trapped inside a jar. All around her was the bitter feeling of betrayal and the heavy weight of wicked deeds almost dragged her to her knees.

  She saw her blonde host, Susanna, worshipping at the feet of the Skin Mechanic and his flock—their naked bodies dazzling her with their impassable youth and impossible beauty. Marla felt herself squirm with despair inside Susanna’s body as she felt her give herself over to these new gods of youth and vigor, tried to warn her of the terrible cost she’d pay. But Marla knew she was watching past events unfold and grew still and quiet as they replayed before her eyes. She saw Vincent’s beautiful little boy given up as a sacrifice to the huge man of skin and bone science. Hearing the poor little boy’s terrible cries as the monster visited unutterable experiments upon his flesh, Marla was desperate to put her hands to her ears and shut them out forever. But they were not her hands, nor her ears, and she had no choice but to endure the howling cries of pain and suffering as the boy was transformed before her into the dreadful, twisted thing she’d encountered in the caves. She saw Vincent, desperate to save him, rescuing the boy and taking to the waves in a little boat. And she watched in mute horror as Vincent was betrayed and dragged back to the island, where he was forced to watch as the Skin Mechanic continued his insane workings on the boy. An experiment, to keep a child young forever. It had succeeded on a physical level only—the body remaining innocent and young, the mind growing old, bitter and corrupt. Dark decades passed before her eyes and she saw how the boy thing had become the Skin Man’s insane apprentice, copying his master’s foul practices on whatever creatures he could find on the island. The birds in the attic of the Big House, his unwitting patients. The Australian boy and Security Operative Anders his graduation projects. He’d tortured and defiled them just as he had been. It was all he knew, all he’d ever know.

  In the midst of all this horror, Marla could almost hear Vincent’s mind snap, the frayed edges of his sanity unraveling never to be mended. She looked on helplessly as he climbed the winding stairs of his lighthouse, utterly bereft. The lighthouse was a ruin to Vincent’s despair and Marla could feel every brick, every bolt and every sheet of glass sighing. The construct of Susanna’s flesh, meanwhile, seemed to be pricking at the memories—infinite arousals playing out across every cell of her skin. The veins that pumped blood all around her were rivers of joy, celebrating the perfect flesh that housed them. Marla saw Susanna remain young and beautiful while Vincent grew old and decrepit. She knew now that through their worship of the Skin Taker and his Gods, The Consortium had somehow made Susanna young again, young forever—but her lover and their son had borne the most terrible price for her vanity.

  She saw them, The Consortium, for what they really were, dark demons standing elegant in the proud flesh of bright beings. She saw them at work in their high buildings and at play in their mansions. She could taste their terrible desires, that strong hunger which defined them. They were ravenous for youth, sated only for the briefest of moments before becoming prey to their fear of losing their beauty again. Driven on by this endless cycle, they had enslaved themselves to many lifetimes of death and rebirth, each more painful than the last, each leaving them ever more unsatisfied. Marla watched in shame, for she felt a part of it clothed in Susanna’s skin, as countless innocents fed those dreadful desires through the ritual and surgery of the Skin Mechanic. She heard the deep drone of his voice, a litany burning into their brains, promising perfection. They were a cult and their Gods were youth and beauty. To them, this island was tir na nog, the land of eternal youth. To Marla, the island was still a living hell—and one they could no more escape from than poor Vincent ever could. They were addicts, hopeless junkies hooked on the dark promises of their Mechanic’s art. And the lengths they’d gone to, just to feel the fleeting benefits of his blade. Their awful history yawned wide before Marla’s horrified eyes. She saw them in their places of power, trawling the world for suitable specimens, treating humanity like fish for the net—each writhing innocent destined for their table at a whim. She watched as they collected DNA samples and cataloged tissue profiles, turning their Master’s work into a silent crusade. She felt the shellshock of these revelations, as their great conspiracies were unpacked before her mind’s eye.

  She fell backwards into her drab room in gray London. She watched herself arguing with her landlady, saw her laptop gone from her room, saw her stolen panties laced with her DNA in far dark towers where data was extracted and subtracted and re-tested, leading all the way back to her, Marla Neuborn. She wept hot tears as she felt Welland’s hot breath nearby, his strong pulse. He wanted her eyes, all the better to see with. My eyes, I’ll never see that way again. He was pulling her back, they all were. She jolted back into the bright room.

  I’m Marla.

  Marla was back inside her body now. But she felt those other beings pulling at her mind and body. Her nerves seemed to stretch out into infinity. Too many forms, too many hosts wanting her to fill them just as she’d filled Susanna’s body moments ago. They not only wanted her flesh, but her identity too—everything that made her who she was. Her desires, her memories, her ambitions were all food to them, accessorized by her fleshy presence on this plane. She steeled herself, trying to hold onto a memory, a sensation, however painful. They couldn’t steal her life away from her like this. She had so much potential. She had come to the island to start afresh, it wasn’t fair, she had to try to fight it. Marla felt her mind was about to snap any moment, the same way Vincent’s had. She visualized the notepads she’d been writing in on the porch of the summerhouse. Each day of her life became a page in the pad and she frantically scribbled each event down, however banal. She was desperate to fill the pages—her lifeblood the ink, her will the pen. But they were closing in, breathing down her neck, clamoring over her shoulder. Each time she filled a page they tore it away along with her memories, forcing her to start over, but she couldn’t remember any more. Couldn’t even remember who she was…

  Marla! I’m Marla…

  Even as she thought her own name, it began to dissolve, to diminish like the fading image of someone she used to love. It was as though the letters making up her name had been printed onto photographic paper, which was then bleached out and overexposed before her very eyes. Nothing left but a blank sheaf of paper, non-descript. Her eyes became lost in the white glare. The lights burned so bright, brilliant really, like the perfect teeth and perfect eyes and perfect nails of her beautiful tenants. Marla-as-world shifted. Everything about her unraveled and she felt them, those demons, luxuriating in her flesh and her potential. They basked in her memories and devoured her dreams. Then she felt herself, her sense of self, torn irretrievabl
y apart as the dark star bodies separated, each taking a piece of her with them.

  Epilogue

  It was done. For another season at least, it was done.

  Morning broke over the island. Sunlight the color of blood oranges shone on the windows of the great white stucco houses, kissing away the last chill of night. Tropical birds went about their toilet, nuzzling at their feathers to release the natural oils essential to their first flight of the day. Taking to the wing, they glided over the treetops and out over the waves that rolled freshly in from the warming ocean. Crickets began to chirp a gleeful cacophony that would last the whole day through, and butterflies rode the breeze of their music above rich outcrops of wild flowers and grasses.

  Atop a ridge, The Consortium stood silently welcoming the dawn, dressed now in understated linens. Some had brought Thermos flasks filled with hot black coffee. Others had dragged picnic baskets all the way up here, eager to breakfast in the first light of a very new day.

  Marla Neuborn was among them too, a part of each and every last one of them, dissolved into their bright bodies and dark hearts. She looked out with new eyes across the ridge and fixed her gaze on the vanishing point where the sky met the sea. Somewhere out there in the world the first pieces of a puzzle were being laid out. A plan was slowly coming to life, like the start up chime of a computer, the soft glow of a screen. She had already forgotten her name as she stood there, proudly young and virile, with the beautiful people. Marla Neuborn had ceased to exist, even as her youth and beauty lived on. The dying whisper of her name had joined a new call.

  A call to new flesh.

  A call to The Lamplighters.

  About the Author

  Frazer Lee is a writer and director whose screen credits include the award-winning short horror movies On Edge, Red Lines, Simone, and the horror/thriller feature film Panic Button. His short stories have appeared in anthologies including the acclaimed Read by Dawn series. He lives with his family in Buckinghamshire, England, where he is working on new fiction and film projects.

  Official Website: www.frazerlee.com

  Twitter: www.twitter.com/frazer_lee

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorFrazerLee

  Doug and Laura thought they bought Galaxy Farm, but the old house is possessing them instead.

  Dark Inspiration

  © 2011 Russell James

  Doug and Laura Locke are New Yorkers who need a fresh start, so they move to Galaxy Farm, an old thoroughbred stable in Tennessee. There Doug finds inspiration to write his epic novel and Laura renews her love of teaching. They also rediscover the love that first drew them together.

  But the home has many secrets. There’s a graveyard hidden at the property’s edge, and tragic deaths stalked the previous owners. Doug has become entranced by the abandoned taxidermy he discovers in the attic. And Laura falls under the spell of the ghosts of twin girls she meets in the old nursery. Only a local antiques dealer senses the danger. She has gruesome premonitions of horrible events to come. She knows she must convince Laura of the threat before the dark force in the house can execute its plan. But time is short, and something seems to be very wrong with Doug…

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Dark Inspiration:

  “Son of a bitch!” he yelled at the Tennessee countryside. Immediate and overwhelming pain arced up his arm like a lightning bolt. Dale Mabry was certain he just flattened his finger.

  He dropped the mallet next to the For Sale sign he had forced into the cold earth. His bare hands already stung from the forty degrees temperature and that amplified the effects of the hammer’s impact. He shook and then inspected his finger. It was rooster red and the nail had a white sheen destined to turn a dark, dead purple.

  “Serves you right, dumbass,” he said to himself. “Shouldn’t be out here at all.”

  It wasn’t just because he was underdressed for the March morning in jeans and a flannel shirt. Something inside him had nagged him from the start about putting the Dale Mabry Realty sign on the old Galaxy Farm property. But with the market stinking like a hog pen, he’d rationalized that any sale was a good sale. No matter who bought. No matter what sold.

  Barren oaks swayed in the wind against the slate-gray sky. The breeze kicked up the stale scent of dead, moldy leaves. Dale had pounded his business equivalent of a tiger’s marking scent where the Galaxy Farm gravel driveway met two-lane US 41. The driveway went a half mile uphill and formed a loop in front of the farm’s large main house. The structure still caught the eye, as it had for over one hundred years.

  The house listed as a six bedroom, four bath, but that did not do justice to its forty-five hundred square feet. The sharply peaked steel roof of the white two-story Victorian jutted into the pewter sky. Two small attic dormer windows watched out over the valley. An inviting covered porch embraced two sides of the first floor. The foundation beneath it was two feet tall, made of hand-laid dun boulders mined from the base of the ridge. From the corner closest to the road rose a round turreted room with windows around both stories. Like an aging cinema beauty, she looked stunning from afar.

  But she showed her age in closeups. Her later years had been hard. The iron racing horse weathervane at the turret’s peak rocked back and forth with a wailing screech in each gust of wind. Threadbare white curtains floated like spirits in the windows, unable to shield the rooms from daylight. Black paint peeled off the shutters around each window in long lazy arcs.

  To the right, a low rise blocked the bottom half of the main barn, hiding its similar stone foundation. Its roofline and monochrome paint scheme matched the house. A cupola burst through the center of the curved roof, glass on every side, filthy from lack of care. The cupola was large enough to accommodate the farm’s master as he watched over the acres of his domain that stretched down along the far side of the ridge.

  Even with the grass in winter’s death grip and the dry weeds overgrown along the split-rail fence line, the place had curb appeal. Dale wished he had the money to replace the sagging old mailbox at the entrance. If he kept the gate under the weathered Galaxy Farm sign locked, any looky-loos would have to go through him for a closer inspection. That would be warning enough to go in and make sure any remnants of the previous owners weren’t around. Sure as hell wouldn’t want to explain any of that to a prospective buyer. The bank wanted this place to move fast, and any wind of its history would stop a deal dead in its tracks.

  There were folks in town who didn’t think it right, Dale helping the bank sell the Galaxy. The two big Moultrie, Tennessee, realtors refused to list it. Half the small town thought it was safer to let it sit empty. Dale figured screw them. They didn’t pay for his daughter’s dance lessons.

  A sharp bang came from the house. Dale saw the screen door on the main entrance swing open and shut in the wind.

  “Well I’ll be…” he muttered. He stuck his throbbing finger in his mouth. He wasn’t in the mood to go tempt the house. Not out here alone. But a good gust would tear that screen door clean off the frame and he’d be blamed.

  He trudged warily up the driveway. Desiccated leaves crunched under his boot heels. He knew he had locked that door. With a new barrel bolt. From the inside.

  Dale stepped on the porch and a feeling of dread came over him, thick and black and heavy as lead. The hairs on the back of his neck quivered. He’d been to the house twice before—with Darrell from the bank to inspect the place, and with Billy to walk the survey. But never alone. There was strength in numbers. Having another live person there kept you from thinking about the Galaxy Farm legends.

  He grabbed the wooden screen door as it swung open again. The barrel bolt on the inside of the door was missing. Four neat white screw holes were still in the door, the grooves from the screw threads still crisp and clear. The door didn’t tear open. Someone removed the bolt. Dale smelled something metallic that made him want to gag.

  A dead rabbit lay in the threshold. Its eyes were wide with terror and still glassy, as if it had only bee
n dead for moments. All that was left of its neck were two jagged edges of slick red fur. The wet blood pooled between the doors and dripped out onto the porch. Above the rabbit, finger-painted in blood on the base of the door in crooked, slashed letters it said— NO SALE DALE.

  Dale leapt off the porch. The screen door swung shut with a muffled thud as it closed against the dead rabbit’s limb. The realtor sprinted for his truck as if he were still a Moultrie High running back. As he ran through the front gate, he pulled it shut behind him. He closed the lock on the clasp in a flash. His heart pounded against his chest. With steel bars between him and the rabbit, he looked back up at the house.

  “Big joke,” he rationalized. “Guys in town playing a big joke or trying to scare me out of selling this place. Yeah, that’s it. There ain’t no ghosts. Just wives’ tales. There ain’t no ghosts.” He caught his breath and tried hard to believe what he said.

  Dale climbed into his silver Ford F-150. He fired up the engine and Johnny Cash came through the radio singing Ring of Fire. With another wall of Detroit steel between him and the house, Dale calmed down. It was some prank, he thought. Had to be. Vernon Pugh, probably, getting even for the bank taking the house.

  Something moved in the distance behind Dale.

  A gray figure stood in the second-floor window of the turreted room. It turned to face Dale. Dale’s heart stopped cold. The man raised his hands over his head and struck the glass. The thump rolled down the hill like the echo of a battle’s first shot. The figure vanished.

  Chill bumps raced from Dale’s neck down his arms. He turned and squinted hard at the empty window. A gust of wind blew and one of the window panes flexed. The sunlight flicked off the hazed surface. The glass banged in its frame.