by Jacob Rayne
This was proved to be false when the fingers wriggled as if waving at Ray. He threw it to one side. It bounced off the wall with a meaty thud and began to race across the floor towards him.
Another hand was emerging from the pumpkin nearest the door now and it was larger, almost big enough to be a man’s hand.
They ran to the stairs, being shepherded there by the hands and another pair that had emerged from the darkness of the kitchen.
They saw the smears of wet blood on the stairs and barely avoided slipping on them.
Halfway up the stairs they found a blood-covered white bed sheet.
‘Jeremy,’ Ray said, his face now as white as the sheet in his quaking hands.
They all let out a little cry at the realisation of what was going on; they were trapped in a nightmare from which there was no waking. The hands were making their way up the stairs now, crawling like huge, horrific insects.
The sight made their skin crawl as if covered with ants.
At the top of the stairs they found Jeremy. His right hand was missing, a surprisingly neat wound still gushing with blood that slid over the edge of the top step and began to drip down onto the next. His eyes had been plucked out of his skull and blood was pouring from the sockets like his sorrow was being expressed in scarlet.
‘Get out of here,’ Jeremy said, his voice racked with agony and despair. ‘Harry’s here. He’ll come for you too.’
They dragged him into the bedroom carefully, eager to avoid the hands which were moving quickly up the stairs behind them.
Ray unfastened his belt and tied it tightly around Jeremy’s wrist.
‘It’ll stop the blood flow,’ he said when he saw Katie and Gerard’s baffled expressions.
The room in which they found themselves was in utter darkness.
No sooner had they noticed the darkness than a candle flame flickered in the furthest corner of the room. A pumpkin was there, rotting and stinking, flies forming a foul cloud around it, but still holding its shape.
On the wall were dozens, no, hundreds of severed hands. They were large and small, old and young, male and female. Those of the curious, the stupid, the fearless.
‘The disbelievers,’ said a hissing voice from behind them. They looked up and there was Harry, blackened and dead and rotting. His right arm ended in a horrid bloody stump that dripped diseased blood onto the bare floorboards. His voice was hard to understand, kind of muffled.
They soon saw why.
His tongue was huge and swollen. It seemed to have two forks in it, although more soon appeared. A hideous black hand emerged from his jaws which opened wide, like those of a snake.
The skin at the sides of Harry’s leering face ripped with sickly sounds that echoed around the room. More of the dark, reeking blood slid down from the wounds.
The hand emerged, black, distended and deadly, the arm pouring from his throat, growing longer and longer, far longer than any arm could or indeed should have been.
It grabbed Ray round the throat and squeezed so hard it looked like his eyes were going to pop out of his skull.
Just before his peripheral vision faded into oblivion, he saw the hands on the walls begin to twitch and judder, suddenly alive after a year of hibernation and decay.
They began to haul themselves down from the nails which pinned them to the plasterboard. The sickly popping noises stuck in the heads of the three terrified kids.
The hands grabbed Ray’s arms and legs. He cried out as two crawled onto his face and their clammy, putrescent fingers sunk into his mouth.
One gripped his lower jaw in a grip harder than that of any vice.
The other matched the force on his upper lip, pulling so hard it felt like his lip was going to come off.
His lower jaw was yanked down with a force that tore the remaining breath from him. A third hand seized the opportunity and darted into his open mouth. Its slimy, maggot-infested fingers gripped his tongue.
He gagged as a maggot crawled into the back of his throat.
The hand gripped tight on his tongue, despite the moisture on there, despite the vomit that began to swamp it.
There was a horrendous pain as the hand tried to tear his tongue out at the root. Blood began to fill his mouth, settling in the vomit like some vile emulsion they’d use to paint the walls of hell, the flow increasing to a gush as the back of his tongue came loose. Blood jetted down his throat and he let out a dumb cry that sent blood bubbling down over his lips and onto his flabby chest.
He glanced around and saw Katie pinned to the floor by her chest and legs. Dozens of the rotting, foul hands held her down so hard it looked as though she was going to pass out through lack of oxygen.
I hope you do, Katie, he thought. Better that than what I’m feeling right now.
A set of hands gripped her left arm and pulled with a sudden savagery that wrenched the limb from its socket. Her cry of agony bounced off the walls and seemed to echo for an eternity.
The arms kept pulling and Ray was certain he heard the pop of each individual ligament as it came free.
Finally the limb was torn loose in a hot geyser of blood and thrown to one side.
The hands made their inexorable way across to the other arm.
Mercifully, the pain and shock had made Katie pass out.
The last thing Gerard saw was the hands pulling apart his ribcage in a shower of gore and holding aloft his still-beating heart. Then his head slumped back onto his chest and his eyes slowly closed.
The now-mute Ray gawped at the nightmare scene before him. Blood washed across the bare floorboards towards him but he was too lazy from the blood loss to move. The hands clamped him to the floor as surely as if he’d been nailed there.
His eyes struggled to focus on the scene before him.
The many hands seemed to have calmed their frantic gouging and wrenching and tearing. Now they were sat on his chest, as if waiting for instructions.
Harry himself leaned over, the thick black arm still protruding from his jaws which were forced open wide enough to almost cleave his skull in two. The tongue itself was stretched out to truly epic proportions, pulsing rhythmically.
Harry and Ray both turned as the door opened.
Ray’s blood-slicked jaw dropped open further – almost as much as Harry’s – when he saw the identity of the visitor.
‘Fiona?’ Harry said, the words thick and distorted by the obscenity pouring from his mouth. ‘Is that you?’
‘There should be more of the little shits on the way,’ a familiar voice said.
Miss Hopper stood there before Ray, somehow different to how he normally perceived her.
Then his eyes, with an effort that seemed to leech the breath from him, fell upon her left forearm, which ended in a ragged stump where her hand should have been.
The end was a thick mass of fish-belly white scar tissue.
She seemed to feel his eyes upon her and pointed to the prosthetic hand poking out of her jacket pocket.
‘I told you that you ought to pay more attention in class, Raymond,’ she said, the demonic grin on her face again like when she was telling Harry’s story. ‘You must be the only one who hadn’t noticed my false hand.’
His brow furrowed again, the mating caterpillars going in for their last hurrah as his final breath rushed into his lungs.
His eyes watched as she leaned into Harry, kissed his putrefying cheek.
‘I’m so sorry, Harry,’ she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Do you forgive me yet?’
Bonus
Read on for a sample of The Lazarus Contagion, the latest full length release from Rayne of Terror
1
Nothing ever happens in Taunton, Mark thought with a grimace. The town was the kind of subdued dwelling hated by the young and sought by the old.
He groaned as he set off to meet his friend Rick for their weekly trek to the mall, a trip which was becoming as pedestrian as every other aspect of life in Taunton.
; The only thing that kept him going was Rick’s razor-sharp putdowns and the hope that something exciting would happen.
‘Fat chance,’ he muttered, touching a flame to the tip of the cigarette that poked from between his lips.
He glanced around furtively as he inhaled the warm smoke. The last thing he needed was for one of his mother’s friends to see him with a cigarette.
The only thing worse than the dull routine of going to the mall would be being grounded.
Mark pushed his shoulder-length blonde hair away from his forehead. His jacket was making him sweat in the heat of the day so he went hands-free on his smoke while he removed the garment.
‘Whoa, gay t-shirt,’ said a voice from his left.
‘Fuck you, Rick,’ he said, turning to see his friend grinning and flipping him the bird.
‘Going to spend some of your rent boy money?’ Rick beamed.
Rick winced as Mark’s fist slammed into his shoulder.
‘Whoa, you hurt, man. No fair.’
Mark grinned and flicked his cigarette at his friend. It landed on his chest, sending sparks flying everywhere like a miniature Catherine wheel.
‘Ok, message received,’ Rick said.
They chatted as they walked, the consensus that the day was going to be as mind-numbingly dull as any other.
But this would not be the case.
At the mall, they shoved their way through the crowds. For two fifteen year old boys, the jostling masses of semi-naked women were a godsend. Rick’s eyes nearly popped out of his head as he saw a pink thong peaking from between the perfect buttocks of a curvy blonde.
‘Seen at least ten girls I’d fuck,’ he grinned.
‘Ditto.’
‘So where you wanna go? Just get some shakes like normal and watch the chicks go by?’
‘Maybe in a bit. I want to get some new trainers. These are practically falling off my feet.’ He raised a shoe that was more hole than material.
‘If we have to,’ Rick groaned. ‘But don’t be long.’
‘Stop whinging. There’s nothing else to do.’
Rick shrugged.
The bargain sports store where Mark bought his trainers was crammed with sweating, jostling punters.
It was a little overwhelming – a crowbar would have been needed to get more people into the store.
The walls were ten feet high, covered in shoes and racks of clothing. The staff all wielded six foot long poles so they could reach the items on the higher shelves.
Mark shoved past a woman who had clearly dodged any sporting activity since he and Rick had been in diapers and headed for the men’s trainers.
‘It’s fucking red hot in here,’ Rick said, fanning air onto his face.
While Mark waited for a path to clear to the shoes, someone barged into him. He almost turned and planted him one but the fact that the man was built like a brick shithouse put him off.
He was bald and had a blue Lakers cap wedged on his skull. His entire face was contorted by an expression that was equal parts agony and lunacy, and he staggered as if heavily intoxicated.
‘Whoa, he’s loaded already,’ Rick said. ‘Not even twelve yet.’
Mark shushed him, not wanting the big guy to hear and become angry.
Mark cursed under his breath as the big man turned and looked right at him. It seemed he had heard the exchange and thought it was Mark who had insulted him.
‘I didn’t say that,’ Mark said, his hands coming up instinctively in front of his face.
A strand of drool came from the right side of the man’s grin. His eyes looked unfocussed and glazed over. He seemed to be looking through Mark.
His mouth moved but the words didn’t make sense.
‘Hee no. Come aaaa. Helmee.’
The man looked distressed and more uncoordinated than ever.
Before Mark could ask him what he meant, the man turned, taking out a young girl as he lunged forwards.
‘Noo,’ he shouted, frantically looking over his shoulder as he shoved deeper into the crowd.
Voices of protest came from the other customers, but they were blotted out by the blaring of the store’s alarm.
‘Think someone’s holding the place up?’ Rick said. ‘That’d be pretty cool.’
A few dozen people managed to shove their way out through the crowd before the store’s shutters began to come down.
Mark heard a scream over the siren and looked back to see a huge man in a black uniform appear. His face was obscured by a large, ominous-looking gas mask.
His beefy hands clutched a submachine gun.
2
Sylvia Arlington could pinpoint, to the exact second, the moment her husband, Ray, had died.
He’d been snuggled into her back, his arms encircling her, at the end of an ordinary Saturday night. They’d gone out for a meal with friends, come home, had an extra beer apiece then retired to bed.
In the midst of her persistent insomnia, she’d felt her husband’s breath warm against her back and his heartbeat resonating through her still frame.
As she began to fall back to sleep, she suddenly became aware that Ray’s next heartbeat hadn’t come.
He didn’t draw his next breath, just convulsed for a few seconds before falling still.
It was a pathetic protest against death’s onslaught.
An hour later she woke with the feeling that her memory had been a dream.
The clammy feel of her husband’s skin against her back convinced her otherwise.
Ditto the lack of the rise and fall of Ray’s flabby chest against her back.
The stiff arms were the final clue. It felt like she was trapped inside a skin and bone cocoon.
Screaming, clawing at the dead limbs, she fought her way free.
She turned to face the lump of lifeless flesh that had, a mere hour ago, been her husband and let out an ear-piercing shriek.
3
As they neared the island, the waves tossed the small boat around like a toy in the hands of a reckless child.
Sergeant Kyle Hammett of the US Marine Corps braced himself against the side of the cabin. He still hated being on the water no matter how many times he did it.
Corporal David Bowes laughed at him and nudged his shoulder.
‘S’up, Sarge?’ he grinned.
Hammett glowered at him but the haymaker he was planning on delivering to Bowes’ gut was disrupted by another bout of rough waves.
‘Fucking boats,’ Hammett grimaced. He glanced around the small cabin. All eight of the other men didn’t seem bothered about the waves or, what was to Hammett, the blindingly obvious fact that the boat could descend beneath the tide at the drop of a hat.
As he was second in command behind Captain Lance Abbott, he wished he could show a better example to the men. But the sea fucking terrified him.
Privates Parker and Goldstein were busy slapping each other around the face, their ritual to get themselves ready for battle.
Hammett admired their bond. They were closer than brothers, having grown up together and enrolled on the same day.
His eyes continued round the cabin.
Captain Abbott was asleep in the front passenger seat, just as cool as you like. Hammett had a healthy respect for the forty-five-year-old Texan captain.
He’d been a young recruit back in ’Nam. No one had expected the skinny redneck to last a day, but he had been the only survivor from his platoon.
The captain had guts and balls in abundance. It was an honour to be serving with him.
Pike and Green were solemn, concentrating on cleaning their assault rifles. He detected a tiny, almost imperceptible, shake in Green’s hand.
At least it’s not just me scared of this fucking death trap, Hammett thought.
Frost was as cool as his name suggested, smoking an inch thick cigar and reading a dog-eared Richard Laymon paperback. He nodded a greeting as he felt the Sergeant’s eyes on him.
Hammett nodded back and looked round the bo
at.
Mann was thumbing through a yellowing deck of cards which depicted naked women in various groin-stiffening positions.
‘Wow,’ Bowes said. ‘Check her out.’
Mann looked up and scowled. ‘Get yer own fuckin’ cards,’ he grunted.
Bowes left him to it. Everyone knew Mann was an accident waiting to happen. It was a well-known fact that the twenty year old with the psycho’s grin and detached manner had only joined the Marines so he could kill.
‘So what’s the story, Sarge?’ Mann said without looking up from the leather-clad lady bending over the back of a Harley Davidson.
‘What?’
‘Well, we been on this fuckin’ boat for bout an hour now and ain’t no one said what we’re doing here.’
‘We’ll be briefed when Captain Abbott wakes up,’ Hammett said. ‘Right now I know as much as you do.’
Mann scowled again and fell silent.
‘So we gonna have to kill anyone?’ Frost said.
‘I have no idea,’ Hammett said.
Frost nodded and took another draw on his cigar. The smoke he exhaled smelt stale. ‘We seem to be going out a long way,’ he noted.
‘Yeah, seems to be the case,’ Hammett said, noting the churning ocean through the porthole.
He couldn’t wait to set foot on dry land again.
Whatever the mission he was sure it would be a piece of piss compared to the boat ride.
How wrong he would be.
4
At the sight of the gas-masked man all hell broke loose.
It seemed like everyone in the store was screaming and shoving towards the exit. The shutters slammed down, trapping the petrified masses in with the gunman.
One man was stuck halfway through the shutters, his face twisted into a pained grimace.
A woman’s ankle poured blood as it was mangled beneath the metal barrier.
The nearest customers tried to help by pulling the shutters up, but they were wasting their time. The metal shutters continued to crush down into the fallen.
Mark looked around. The best way to go was probably upstairs. With luck, the gunman wouldn’t be able to reach them up there. The second floor also had bats and golf clubs and other items that would make good weapons.
